


The Sky Ends Here

by Major



Category: White Collar
Genre: Angst, Case Fic, Drama, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Friendship, Gen, Humor, M/M, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 15:20:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9826208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Major/pseuds/Major
Summary: Neal and Peter get a new case. A weird one. It's not too surprising that all roads lead to Mozzie.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place during early season four. I have so many drawer fics that I wrote during the show's run, but for some reason rewatching the series a couple years after it ended turned out to be the kick of inspiration I needed to actually start and finish one for the fandom. This will be five chapters in all. I'll post weekly as I get through final edits. I really miss this show! And Mozzie. Man, I miss Moz.
> 
>  **Warning:** Brief Violence

Was it too much to ask that his shoes actually flop at the end? Smiley yanked the oversized shoes off his feet and threw them into a rack of brightly multicolored jumpsuits in his small dressing room. The costume department had taken a dive in the last year. His shoes were off. His buttons were too small when he specifically asked for them to be cartoonishly large; he may as well have been wearing a cardigan and dad jeans. This was not how one clowned.

He looked at himself in the mirror. Thirty years in the business, and what did it get him? A rainbow fro that slipped off his bald cap, balloon pants with a rip in the seam, and a foam nose that had faded to pink and not been dyed or replaced in months. It was embarrassing.

His performances were worth the price of tickets, but his costumes undersold him. Kids hardly approached him for balloons or pictures. He was turning into a laughingstock, and nobody else in the circus seemed to be worried that one of their best assets was being placated with false promises and helium tanks when all he wanted was a new wardrobe.

He went out into the hallway and shouted in the general direction of the costume department, “You’re spitting on the backbone of this place! Clowns _are_ the circus! When I walk, good luck hiring some amateur that can’t fall funny. I’m the only clown on the East Coast that can make a two-headed octopus balloon animal in under thirty seconds!”

All he asked for was new clothes. That was all. Also, whiskey. Whiskey was good.

He turned back around to pour another glass in the dressing room but ran smack into someone.

“Oh.” He wobbled a bit as he backed up in surprise. “Hey? What’re you doing here? I thought—”

The knife shot out and was hilt deep in his chest before he had a chance to register that there was a weapon between them. He choked on the words and his groan and the scream that all wanted to come out at once and only managed to give a strangled grunt as the knife was yanked out, and he dropped.

Footsteps hurried down the hallway away from him, and he tried to crawl for the phone in the dressing room to call for help even though the floor smeared wet beneath him as he dragged himself, but all he managed to do was get his torso over the threshold and block the door.

His vision got fluffy at the edges, black and zeroing in, and he knew what was coming despite the haze of too much booze and shock. A swell of bitterness filled him that he was going to die there in that ugly, old suit. That was no way for a clown of his caliber to go out.

There was still one thing he could do before the blackness swallowed him. Smiley grit his teeth and got to work. When he was done, he felt a rush of smug victory. Not a bad feeling to die with.

****

After Neal checked his phone for the fifth time that night, Peter’s admittedly impressive patience gave way to annoyance.

He turned to him in the car across the street from the abandoned warehouse they were staking out. “Will you stop moping?”

“I’m not moping.” Neal proved it by tucking his phone away into the inside pocket of his jacket. Out of sight, out of mind. “Checking is not moping.”

“It absolutely isn’t, I agree.” Peter pointed at his chest where the phone was hidden but not as quickly forgotten as Neal would have liked. “But checking to see if Mozzie has called back five times in ten minutes? Yeah, we’re skirting moping territory.”

“It’s not even near the fence of moping. You should tone down your awareness of my every move, also. Attention can move from flattering to stalking very quickly.”

“You’re the stalker,” Peter argued. “Mozzie is going to put a restraining order on you.”

“That would require him to willingly depend on the judicial system for something, so I think I’m safe.”

And he was not moping. Much.

Mozzie had been gone a week to do a job with Gordon Taylor in Paris, news passed to Peter more along the lines of ‘traveling to enrich his spirit’, which wasn’t exactly a lie anyway. The anklet kept Neal from joining, which he might have been able to swallow with less bitterness if Mozzie had bothered to return any of his calls for the last few days.

He got it. Things got messy or went sideways, and filling your buddy back home in on your adventures in high-profile burglary dropped on the priorities list. Even if things were going perfectly smoothly, there were preparations to be made and actions to put in motion. Taylor hired Mozzie, because Mozzie was the best at what he did. He was going to be busy.

Still, he worried. If Moz got busted, there was little he would be able to do to help him in France with a leash around his ankle and Peter monitoring his every move. Mozzie was not built for a cage. Neal went to prison and did the time forced on him, but even trying to imagine Mozzie behind bars made his brain hurt. People like Mozzie - and there were no people like Mozzie - needed fresh air, freedom, and anonymity to breathe. If he would just call back and let him know that things were fine but he was busy, he could stop annoying Peter by turning his phone’s screen on again to look for new messages.

“Time zones?” Peter suggested, and it took a moment to realize he wasn’t going to add on to that.

Neal nodded. “Yes, Peter, I am aware of time zones. Are you aware that within three days, there are several blocks of reasonable hours when he could have called me back? France doesn’t operate on a _30 Days of Night_ type system.”

He ignored him. "I thought Mozzie was in Spain."

Neal turned to look out the windshield to hide the flash of _oops_ that crossed his eyes. Specificity wouldn't do Mozzie any favors if Peter heard about the robbery (likely) and became suspicious (extremely likely).

Lying was the best course. "That's what I said."

Peter passed him a look that said he didn't buy it for a second but decided to let it go. Neal hoped that apathy held up once Gordon Taylor's latest score made the news and turned into a case file on his desk.

“Maybe he met a girl,” Peter suggested instead. “Mozzie could be holed up in a hotel in Paris with the view of the Eiffel Tower, speaking French to some woman crazy enough to enjoy his craziness.”

“No.”

He leaned forward when he thought he caught movement up ahead, but the shadows remained undisturbed. He rested back against the seat, bored. False alarm.

“Why not?" Peter drank the last of his coffee, tapping the bottom of the cup to get the final drips. He was always very charitable towards Mozzie, adding, "I’m sure there are weirdos in Europe too.”

“Because Moz would have called and told me if there was a woman. We tell each other about women.”

It would have been more of a chore not to, considering Mozzie's habit of letting himself into his apartment at odd hours, with a perfunctory wave at anyone else that happened to be there in whatever state of undress, and launching into excited chatter about this or that word from the street until Neal put on a robe and his guest let herself out. He figured he should probably have been more annoyed by the interruptions, but Mozzie usually came bearing something interesting: word about a new score, rumors of an underground legend in town, and one time, a porcelain elephant with a coded letter rolled up and hidden in its trunk. They still hadn't cracked that one, but it was fun to think about.

As for Mozzie, his trysts were more infrequent, but Neal had a solid record just the same. There were more dates on record than sex and more tales of faraway admiration without any actual contact at all than either of those. They had breakfast at a pancake place with bad pancakes more than once because a waitress had attracted Mozzie's radar for suspicious activity. He lost interest when she turned out to not be a spy but a pot dealer. Less glamorous. They started eating breakfast at restaurants with food that actually tasted good again. If there was a new woman with a minor secret that Mozzie's imagination was building up into an alluring world-class supervillain, he would know.

Peter wasn't as quick to dismiss the possibility. “Like you’ve never gotten wrapped up in some new affair and forgotten to leave the room or eat, much less ring up your pals to tell them all about it.”

Not if he was on a job and not checking in meant letting Moz think he got pinched.

“He would call me about a woman,” he insisted.

Peter shrugged and pulled out the sandwich Elizabeth made for him, peering out the windshield and not noticing the way his next words swung into Neal like a barbed wire hammer. “Maybe he’s just tired of New York. Wants to live abroad.”

It hit a sore spot and left it to throb untreated in his chest. That was the core of his impatience to hear back from Mozzie. He wanted to be in Paris. He wanted to travel and live where he wanted and steal whatever he could pull off without getting tagged again. He should have been on Gordon Taylor’s crew right there with him. It was a bruise he couldn’t stop pushing on as his mind circled the possibility that, yeah, maybe Mozzie just wasn’t getting back to him because he was tired of New York, and tangentially, Neal’s leashed ankle to it.

The stakeout ended with no new leads and no new messages.

It wasn’t until the morning that things got interesting enough to turn his thoughts away from Paris.

Two obvious Feds walked into the White Collar Unit and after a couple of minutes with Peter, he leaned out of his office and beckoned him up.

He went over and smiled. The woman was striking, and the man with her wasn’t a slouch either. Between them and Diana and Jones out there, he was beginning to suspect that headshots and model measurements were a requirement to join the FBI.

“Neal, this is Agent Crue and Agent Bloom. They’re with the BAU.”

At his inquiring look, the blonde woman, Crue, explained, “The Behavioral Analysis Unit.”

“Ah.”

“They’re in New York investigating a murder.” To the BAU, he said, “This is the guy you want to talk to.”

Neal wasn’t so sure he liked the sound of this. “Murder isn’t my usual area of expertise.”

Peter sighed heavily and asked the last thing he expected, “Did you hear from Mozzie last night?”

Suddenly, with homicide investigators in the room, Mozzie’s silence over the past few days took on a much more sinister feel.

That barbed wire hammer wound back and knocked the air out of him. Neal blinked in surprise, feeling himself go tense. “What?”

Peter looked at the BAU and back at him, making the connection and dismissing it quickly. “No, no! Nothing like that. Mozzie’s status as far as I know is still just screening you.”

Relief came like water after a drought. His knees felt like they needed some concrete to support him. His irritation at Mozzie for ignoring him while he had adventures in Paris with Gordon Taylor vanished the moment his name and ‘murder’ were thrown into the mix together.

He pat his chest subconsciously over the phone with the empty inbox. “Thanks for the arrhythmia, Peter. No, I haven’t heard from Moz. What does that have to do with this?”

“Mozzie may be linked to their case.”

“To a murder?” Neal couldn’t help sounding incredulous.

After the hit on Keller, he was less shocked by what Mozzie may or may not have been capable of, but murdering someone himself (or murdering someone himself and leaving behind a trace) stretched the realm of possibility. He erased all evidence that he was ever there when he left a McDonald’s. A murder scene wouldn’t be the place to get sloppy.

“He’s missing?” Agent Crue asked.

“No. He’s traveling. And you have the wrong guy.” He didn’t need to see what they had. Even hard proof was dishonest. He knew that any road that led to Mozzie was a dummy trail. “Why do you suspect him?”

Agent Bloom pulled a full page photo from a folder and held it out for him to see. It was a picture from the crime scene. There were messy letters spelled out on a red splattered white carpet.

“The victim wrote his name in blood.”

That’ll do it. The phone took on the weight of a brick in his pocket, growing heavier the longer it didn’t ring.

He looked away from the ugly image and smiled with a tight shrug. “That could be any Mozzie. There must be a vast directory of Mozzies you could point the finger at.”

“He’s a person of interest, not a suspect,” Bloom clarified.

Yeah, Neal knew that game. They only wanted to ask questions. No one was in trouble. Then there were cuffs and tiny prison cells with plastic trays for lunch and wardens to con into giving you special treatment. If Mozzie got wind that he was a person of interest, it could have explained why he dropped so far off the grid.

Mozzie was going to be really disappointed that a group of Feds knew where to sniff around for him at all once he came back. Peter was to blame for that. The BAU’s tech support found a mention of Mozzie in one of Peter’s reports. The location was right, and a few phone calls confirmed a criminal history. Neal wouldn’t forgive himself if being connected to him got him a bogus murder charge.

Moz being soft-core accused of killing somebody should have been the weirdest part of the day. It was only the start of escalating weirdness.

He and Peter tagged along with Crue and Bloom to interview a witness. Peter pulled the car to a stop behind theirs, and Neal leaned forward and squinted to make sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. He figured they were on their way to the witness’ house or the scene of the crime, but this was unexpected.

“Is that a—”

“Circus tent.” Peter glanced at him. “Mozzie can never be in normal trouble. It always has to be bizarre.”

‘Normal’ had never particularly appealed to him. “On the bright side, there are probably clowns inside, and Elizabeth tells me you don’t do well with those. So this could be really good for me.”

“When were you and El discussing clowns?”

“We were discussing Tim Curry, and Pennywise came up.”

“When were you and El discussing Tim Curry?”

“We were talking about _The Rocky Horror Picture Show_.”

“When— Nevermind.” Peter got out of the car, and Neal followed, pulling his phone out and hitting the number one speed dial as he went, hanging back to leave his message in private.

“Moz. It’s me. If you don’t call me back by tonight, I’m sending Dog the Bounty Hunter after you. I know how much his mullet disconcerts you, but you brought this on yourself. Call me. Things are getting…” 'Weird' wasn’t a strong enough word. “Too you.”

He hung up as he caught up to the others and followed them into the tent.

A pretty middle-aged woman in a leopard print unitard abandoned the trapeze area when she saw them come in and walked over. Behind her, others in similar dress were practicing over a net. Neal craned his neck to watch.

“Oh!” Peter cringed as a glittery blue figure flew through the air from one bar to another.

“Kind of beautiful,” Neal said, admiring the strength it took to maneuver like that without incident and the lines of their bodies as they swung and flipped high above the ground. It was art.

Peter was already miserable inside the tent. “Don’t start.”

The leopard woman turned out to be Kelly Knight. She discovered the body, and already Neal wasn’t enjoying this case. If Moz wasn’t involved, he would have insisted on finding something more suited to his talents. Bodies and bloody messages were not what he signed up for. If he was working against his will, it should have at least been well away from the carnage of this kind of crime.

Crue and Bloom were interviewing the other trapeze artist that Kelly was with when they found Smiley. He was half Kelly's age, double her size, and loud enough in his enthusiastic retelling of it for Neal to catch scraps of his story, including gems like _gnarly gash_ and _he wasn't wearing his shoes, I thought his feet would be longer_.

“So there I was,” Kelly said, round brown eyes widening and misting over, “making my way to the changing room, and I tripped over Smiley! Smacked the wall with my elbow.”

She twisted her arm around, revealing the rubbery movement of her double-jointed arm to show off the bruise there as proof. Peter’s displeasure at the movement was written across his cringe, but Neal wasn’t sure if he was more disturbed or intrigued.

“Smiley,” Peter deadpanned. “Does he have a real name?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Something Bloden? I don’t talk to the clowns.”

“You don’t like them either?” Peter warmed a little at having someone to share his distaste with, but her lips thinned judgmentally.

“No, I’m not a clownist.”

“That’s not a thing—”

“I’m just busy. And new. But there was poor Smiley, not smiling anymore. Well, he was. He still had his makeup on. The smile was big and really caked in there, but he was dead.”

“Mozzie,” Neal said, paying careful attention to her. Whatever happened to Bloden, she seemed genuinely shocked by stumbling across his corpse. “Does that mean anything to you? Is it a circus term?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what a mozzie is, but it must be important if Smiley decided it was worth dipping in his stab wound to paint that out. So gross. And sad!” she was quick to add. “So sad.”

Yes. So.

“What do you think?” Neal asked Peter as they were headed back to the car.

He gave him the look that meant things were fixing to get complicated. “I think you need to find Mozzie.”

Because luck was a frequent friend of his, there were no bloodhounds required for the task. Neal got home, folded his jacket on the back of a kitchen chair, and glanced up to see the back of a familiar head sitting out on the terrace under the burgeoning night sky.

Relief came first. Exasperation was quick on its heels.

Neal walked over and let himself out. Mozzie, being Mozzie, knew he was there without turning.

“Having the Eiffel Tower for a view was incredible, but I suppose the Chrysler Building is fine too.”

Neal stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked over within view. “Getting elitist on me, Moz?”

He smiled, mischievous, a look that always warned Neal that he was either going to love what came out of his mouth next or have to start scrambling for a strategy to keep them both out of prison soon.

“Have you checked your bank account?” Mozzie asked, which was at least better than the time he had smiled like that and informed him that, actually, the house whose safe they were currently in had four Dobermans guarding it that weren’t there when they cased the place.

It was an ominous enough question that he paused the interrogation he was fixing to launch into about circuses and bloody messages.

“How long have you been back?” he asked while he logged into his account on his phone.

“’Bout an hour,” he replied, and Neal hoped he had proof of that, that wouldn’t give away what he was really up to in France, or the FBI might try to make it out like Mozzie had been in New York at the time of the murder.

Neal was jolted from that line of thought when he noticed how much extra money was now nestled in his account with the rest of his savings. Mozzie had added a little something to it. “$200,000?”

Mozzie lifted his nearly empty wine glass in a toast, overly pleased with himself as he did so. “Your half of the job.”

That meant Moz had raked in 400K, and now Neal was doubly jealous that he got to pull a con that big while he was in New York interviewing contortionists about a guy named Smiley who apparently hadn’t made many other people smile themselves.

“My half? Moz, I wasn’t even there.”

“We’re partners. My score es su score.”

Neal shook his head, guilt and something that dropped dangerously close to self-pity, making the gesture feel correctly like more than he deserved. “It’s not fair. You shouldn’t give this to me.”

“Hey, if I ever get a government tracker strapped to my leg, I hope you’ll supplement my wages as well.”

Now there was a scenario that would never come to fruition. “You’d cut and run, first time they left you alone with scissors.”

“I’m a free bird, Neal. No suit is clipping my wings.”

It was just as well. Neal tried to imagine Peter having to shepherd Mozzie around with him everywhere, and it nearly sent his brain into a system shutdown. He wasn’t sure who would lose it first in that scenario.

In the end, because they were partners, and because he would do the same in his position, all that was left was gratitude. “This is incredibly generous, Moz. Thank you.”

Mozzie nodded happily and launched into a tale of how Gordon Taylor and the rest of the crew pulled off the robbery. Neal settled in the chair beside him and pictured it in his head: the strategy board of the building, all the moving pieces that had to shift and finesse and con the other pieces just right to pull off the timing needed to make out with the loot. It was cinema, fiction and reality blending to create an image just real enough to make the viewer buy into it. The rest was just money in the bank.

“Would have been more fun if you were there,” Mozzie concluded, “but crime is an imperfect art.”

“Sounds amazing.” Neal felt happy for him and green for himself. He loved his life in New York, he did, but he missed it, was afraid not stretching his muscles would put him behind in the game. Helping work cases was its own kind of practice, but he always knew he had backup in the form of a dozen agents at his back and no risk of prison. It was conning with a safety net.

Mozzie told him about the few hiccups too. It was nothing too serious, but Taylor did suspect there might have been a leak at one point and put everyone on radio silence at the pre-job hideout until the score was complete. Mozzie had to forfeit all of his phones and turn into a ghost for days, a precaution Taylor might have felt needed to be taken after the last job they collaborated on which did involve the FBI. Neal looked over, and the part of him that felt off-balance since Mozzie stopped checking in, righted itself.

“I thought you were screening me,” he admitted as they sat out there and enjoyed the city.

“What do you mean?”

“I hadn’t heard from you. Thought you might be putting down roots, turning your back on New York.” And him as a consequence. He wouldn’t blame him if he did. Mozzie wasn’t built to stand still, and they’d been in a fixed state for a few years now.

Mozzie pulled a face that suggested he did not agree with that logic. “I was gone a week. I hope you didn’t file a missing persons report.” He pointed at him suddenly, stern with alarm. "Never do that, by the way."

Living anonymously was everything to him. He would probably prefer to be lost at sea than have the Coast Guard be aware of his existence.

“I canceled the milk cartons when I saw you on the roof.” He watched Mozzie's profile, chin in the air as he inspected the stars, working through conspiracy theories about certain constellations leading to ancient hidden treasure or deciding what to eat for breakfast tomorrow. He never knew with Moz, but Neal preferred puzzle pieces to the picture it made anyway. “I’m glad you’re back.”

Mozzie brightened and leaned over, pulling a box out from under his chair. “Ooh! I brought you gifts. The velvet box is for June.”

Neal reached over and dragged it over to himself. “Is it jewelry?” At his nod, he asked, “Can she wear it in public?”

After some consideration, he decided, “Probably best to showcase it in a few months, after the heat cools off.”

The last thing they needed was to get busted because June was spotted with a hot necklace. He made a note to make a note for June and went through his own stuff. The hat he tried on right away to a nod of approval from Mozzie. There was a small hint of color from the two red and black feathers tucked into the ribbon band. He caught sight of his reflection in the glass behind them. It looked great, but his favorite gift was the small figurine of the Eiffel Tower with big plastic googly eyes and a cheap, toothy smile at the top.

Mozzie shrugged. “Lolana needed a friend.”

Yeah. Neal got the hint. They could run off to an island or run off to Paris. Mozzie was ready either way if Neal was. If they didn't stop collecting symbols for their freedom, they would end up on the run with a hula girl, a tower, and a backpack full of tourist souvenir toys.

"Had a good time on Taylor's crew," Mozzie said, and Neal started to nod along until he went on. "Just saying, I'm pretty sure I could get him to include you on the next job I get invited to if you wanted to—"

"No. Moz. I'm not doing anything else with this anklet on. It's too risky." Prison wasn't worth a painting. It wasn't even worth the thrill of acquiring the painting.

Mozzie had it in him to argue, though. "What if it's something big? Huge even? Something that could set us up for life. It could be our last score!"

He heard that before. 'Last' didn't come with finality. It was just the lie between this job and the next.

Neal shook his head despite Mozzie's building disappointment. "There are only three things in life that are forever. The sky is one." He peered up at the stars that made maps in Mozzie's head and stretched as far as his distrust in the generally accepted reality of things. "Chasing one last score is another. It's never the last, and no one ever wants it to be."

He and Mozzie should have started an anonymous support group for thieves looking to be reformed. Not that Mozzie had any desire or respect for reformation. Neal might have been the only one to show up to the meetings.

"True," he allowed, "though I'll argue the superiority of _treasure_ over the proverbial dragon. What's the third?"

He was going to say getting caught by Peter when he stole something or ran, but Mozzie was high off a new score and too many mentions of prison or law enforcement would have been a buzzkill.

Neal grinned his best bullshitting grin. "Our friendship, of course."

Mozzie rolled his eyes. "I'll ignore the shameless sentimentality since it plays to my own ego."

It was only half-bullshit anyway. After Kate, past associates, and his family, he stopped trusting the idea that people could be permanent. Like things, they could be stolen or lost. Mozzie had a way of butting heads with most conventions, though. If anyone could give the sky a run for its money in the forever department, it was him.

Also, trouble. Trouble was a forever thing.

Mozzie watched him turn Eiffel over in his hands and asked, “So what did I miss?”

The moment of truth. Or, knowing him, the moment the weird got weirder.

Neal looked up and leaned over his knees to inform him, “Well, you’re a person of interest in the murder of a circus clown.”

The moment hung in the air with a bewildered silence that broke the only way it could have.

“Get the wine,” Mozzie advised.

“Yep.” Neal got up and went for an extra glass, a full bottle, and hopefully some answers.


	2. Chapter 2

Peter held out the murder victim’s license picture for Mozzie to inspect from across the table in the interrogation room in the White Collar Unit, which Neal had to bribe him to willingly enter with tickets to the new Windsor-Price art exhibit opening that weekend. He didn’t mention that he was going to go with him anyway. Leverage was a hard thing to come by when it came down to Mozzie vs. The Man.

Smiley looked like a normal man without the makeup. The only thing that really stuck out was how angry he looked, glaring into the camera like the DMV had personally threatened to take him out if he didn’t stand still and get his picture taken.

“Nate Bloden,” Peter informed him. “Ring any bells?”

Mozzie gave it a long moment of inspection where he seemed to almost catch on to something but ultimately shook his head.

“Can I go now?”

Neal was sitting next to him opposite Peter and glanced across the table where Agent Crue was staring at Mozzie under hawkish eyes, looking for any tell that he was involved.

“You sure, Moz?” he asked.

He shrugged. “I don’t know him.”

Crue pulled a photo from her folder and placed it face up on the table in front of him. “So you have no idea why he would have written your name in his dying moments?”

Neal frowned. He much preferred pictures of stolen diamonds and priceless paintings to messages in blood. To his surprise, Mozzie leaned forward and drew the picture closer to him, squinting at it with more scrutiny than he had given the license photo.

“What is it?”

“Do you have a better picture of his face?” he asked. In the picture with his name scrawled in the carpet, Bloden’s face was only in profile and was mostly off the page.

Peter slid the license photo back, but Mozzie shook his head and clarified, “His real face. His clown one.”

Peter and Neal glanced at each other before Crue slid a better crime scene photo over where Smiley was in full frame.

“Ha!” Mozzie said, slapping the picture.

“Ha?” Peter inquired.

Mozzie pointed at the dead man. “This isn’t Nate Bloden, and his clown name is not Smiley either. Or it wasn’t. Not when I knew him. This is Mopey. I knew him in Detroit. I hated him.” Considering Crue was looking for reasons to blame the murder on him, Neal jabbed Mozzie in the side with his elbow, and he quickly added, “God rest his soul.”

“Why did you hate him?” Crue asked.

“He was an ass,” Mozzie declared to a kick from Neal. “May he rest in peace.”

“Was Mopey his street name?” Peter asked.

“No. It was his clown name.”

It wasn’t even 9 a.m., and Peter already looked exasperated. Neal’s original assessment was right. This case was turning out to be very Mozzie.

“You knew him as a clown?”

“Well, yeah. Back in the nineties, I was having domestic troubles with my then girlfriend, Betty Brink. She was deep into the clown lifestyle.”

Peter stared blankly, and Crue looked like she was regretting taking this assignment.

Neal remembered hearing about Betty before. “I thought you said Betty was a comedian.” He assumed he meant she did standup acts in comedy clubs.

“Oh yeah. She was big at children’s parties in particular. The kids really loved her when she transformed from Betty into Bubbles the Clown.”

Neal had questions. So many questions that he wasn’t sure he wanted the answers to.

Peter encouraged him to continue reluctantly. “So you were having trouble with Betty?”

“Yes,” Mozzie nodded. “She kept leaving her trick flowers lying around my apartment, and every time I would try to move them they would squirt me in the eye and get my stuff all wet. I lost many sewer blueprints to the smears of the squirting daisies.”

“So normal couple problems then,” Peter assessed dryly.

“Betty signed us up for couples clowning,” Mozzie concluded like that was a natural way to conclude anything.

Peter pinched the bridge of his nose. “Couples clowning.”

“It was effective for a while. Our counselor told us we had compatible balloon spirit animals.” He added as an aside, “She was a giraffe. I was a Southern white rhino. We roamed the astral Sahara together.”

Neal couldn’t help the rush of fondness at the absurdity. It was just too Mozzie.

Peter gave a quick shake of his head. “What—? What does that even—? What does this have to do with Nate Bloden?”

“That’s where I met him. Mopey. He was there with his girlfriend, Choo Choo Cherry, a clown and a locomotive enthusiast. You remember Lester?" he asked Neal, who had to consider the name for a second before he could recall.

"Your friend with the vineyard?"

Just the thought of the plantation of grapevines gave Mozzie a glowing effect. "He brings me a bottle of his best every time we get together."

"Stepping out on my liquor cabinet?" Neal accused.

Mozzie grinned. "Only once a year when he comes up on business. Besides, your cabinet and I have an open relationship. It understands I can't be tied down."

Neal's liquor cabinet had a very modern approach to fidelity. Not that he never suspected Mozzie of affairs. He had a thirst that could never be satisfied by one man's wine collection. "What does Lester have to do with this?"

"That's where we met. We all had the same counselor, Lenora Groves.”

“What?” Peter protested. “Lenora? Not Candy Cupcake or Bobo Blossom?”

These were exactly the kind of conversations that kept content smiles on Neal’s face. He chose to check normal at the door and follow the weirdness where it went.

“She counseled clowns. She wasn’t a clown herself,” Mozzie replied like it was obvious.

“Right. What was I thinking?”

“You should ask Lenora or Cherry what’s been going on with Mopey,” Moz advised. “I haven’t seen him in years. Luck was on my side.” Neal stepped on his foot. “A tragedy, really.”

Neal’s eyes slid sideways to meet his gaze, and Mozzie made a small effort to look contrite. Very small.

He tried to be helpful since he couldn’t be grieved. “Look, if you want to know who killed Mopey, you should look into the local practice.”

“What are you talking about?” Peter asked.

“Local practice?” Neal almost didn’t want confirmation. “The couples counseling?”

“Couples clowning,” Mozzie corrected, nodding. “My old counselor, Lenora Groves, is here in New York now. I heard through the clown vine—”

“That’s not a thing,” Peter said, shaking his head.

“—that Mopey and his wife moved here to keep getting counseling from her when she moved here a few years back.”

Crue checked her file. “It says he’s divorced from a woman named Clara Toore.”

Mozzie laced his fingers together on top of the table. “Yeah. Counseling didn’t work. That’s what Jelly the Jingler mentioned one time. We have drinks every couple of years when he comes to Time Square for New Years.”

Peter looked like he wanted to poke that name-drop or possibly the back of Mozzie’s head with an open palm but turned to confer with Crue after a stoic pause instead.

Neal leaned towards him and whispered, “Jelly the Jingler sounds like a pervert.”

Mozzie ruminated on that. “He’s not _not_ a pervert.”

Neal leaned back as Peter and Crue refocused on them.

“Investigating from the inside sounds like the best plan. We’ll come at it from two fronts. The newcomers.” He pointed towards himself. “And the insider.”

He stared at Mozzie. Mozzie stared back.

Peter stared harder.

Mozzie narrowed his eyes and balked. “I am no suit! I came in here of my own free will and will not be turned into a government hamster, set in a cage and told to run on the wheel of fascism.”

“You don’t have to be a hamster,” Peter assured him. Mozzie relaxed against his chair. “You just have to go undercover as a couple in need of therapeutic clowning.”

“I would sooner marry outside my species than couple with you, Suit.”

Peter smiled broadly, and really, he may as well have scored the moment with sinister music from a black and white horror film to go along with the wicked glint of it. All he was missing was a finely combed mustache.

“That’s fine,” he said. “Because I’m going in with Diana. You’re going in with Neal.”

Peter’s eyes turned to Neal, and he was _way_ too happy about this plan. Neal gazed back wryly.

“Oh.” Mozzie nodded until the implication sunk in. “Oh.”

“You could always call Jelly instead,” Neal suggested as he scooted his chair back to get up.

“Pass. Jelly has an… olfactory charm that is incompatible with my personal preferences. You’ll do.”

Neal smiled. “Nothing flatters me more than someone grudgingly entering a fake relationship with me over a perverted clown that stinks.”

The whole thing moved fast. Mozzie got them appointments with Dr. Lenora Groves (actual M.D., not a graduate of clown college as he originally suspected) for that afternoon. By the time Neal met Mozzie at his apartment to get ready, there was already a slew of makeup, props, and costumes strung about the kitchen table and chairs. He tried to figure out which pieces were newly bought or rented and which were part of Mozzie’s super-secret closet clowning, but the only hint he got was being warned off a bright red wig due to its ‘unfortunate itch’.

“You can make a rhino balloon animal?” he asked curiously as he folded his suit jacket over the back of a chair next to a green wig that hung off the corner and started to undo the buttons on his shirt.

Mozzie was neatly setting his shoes against the wall and pulling on a pair of ridiculous, long and cartoonish brown ones with wide polka-dotted laces.

There was pride in his answer, “And make the Southern white and greater one-horned distinct.”

Neal reached for a horizontally striped black and white three-quarter sleeved shirt that looked like something a street performer might wear and didn’t appear to have any offensive joke shop accessories attached to it. “You’re a man of many skills, Moz.”

“It’s important to spread your talent over many categories.”

“You never know when you’re going to need to go undercover as a clown,” Neal agreed. “You never told me you were into clowning.”

“I wasn’t.” And he did look sufficiently miserable enough to be believed as he picked up a long ratty-by-design brown and grey patched coat with tails. “You do weird things for the people you love.”

Neal looked down at the spread of makeup. He was used to his share of costumes for cons, but clearing Mozzie’s name was gearing them towards one of their more bizarre wardrobes. “You can say that again.”

They finished getting dressed. Neal looked at himself in the mirror across from the table. He was in black pants, suspenders, and shoes with no socks, paired with white gloves and a beret. Other than painting his face white and using an abundant amount of eyeliner, he wasn’t sure what else to do to complete the look. Apparently, Mozzie did, because he grabbed a small makeup kit and brush and turned his chin to add to his face. Neal was compliant as he dipped the tip into the bright red and got to work.

“Ooh, listen,” Mozzie said while Neal made a valiant effort to keep his face passive in order to be a good canvas despite wanting to break into a smile as his eyes drifted down over Mozzie’s ridiculous baggy brown slacks and deliberately torn and patched vest under the tails. “We need to wrap this up fast.”

“Speed makeup? Are you challenging me to a clown-off?”

Mozzie smiled, and it was softer this close, familiar in a way that tugged at his memory and resurfaced thoughts of a hundred that came before it. “No. Solving the mystery of the tragic loss of Mopey. Gordon Taylor called me this morning. He has another job, and he wants me on the crew. I leave Sunday morning for Italy.”

It was Monday now.

Neal’s good mood took an unexpected hit. It wasn’t that he wasn’t grateful for the cushion the Paris job gave them. He obviously couldn’t take off for Italy, but there was no reason Mozzie shouldn’t take part if he wanted to. Taylor had a good reputation, avoided harm and weapons, and was always fair to the people he worked with. There was no reason the news should have nagged as quickly as it did. It left him inexplicably… displeased, anyway.

“So soon? That’s an awfully short window to plan another job.”

Timing was the easiest thing to latch onto to address the swell of unhappiness that came with the news.

Mozzie tossed the brush down to the table and examined his face a moment before reaching for a black lipstick and unscrewing it to paint Neal’s lips. He parted them and left them loose while he spread the color from side to side, the pressure and Mozzie’s concentration on the task tugging at his chest in an odd way.

He waited until he got it right and put the cap back on the lipstick before answering, handing Neal a Kleenex to blot with. “Apparently, it’s been in the works for a while. The stars aligned, and he wants to hit his target while the hitting is good. Should be a good payday.”

Still, Neal resisted. “Do we really need the money? After the last job, we’re pretty flush.”

Mozzie reclaimed the brush and added a few more strokes of color to his cheek. “Pirates don’t care about treasure. They care about the adventure of acquiring said treasure.”

That was a romantic, if inaccurate, way to view them. “I’m pretty sure pirates would trade the high seas for easy treasure chests delivered to their doorstep.”

At least some of the time. Cannons and skull-and-bones flags were fun, but a pot of gold with a bow on it, occasionally, could go a long way towards a rested spirit.

“We’re evolved pirates,” Mozzie argued and stepped back, finished.

Neal looked at himself in the mirror. There was a small, cleanly painted red heart high on his cheek, below the corner of his eye. He glanced at Mozzie’s reflection beside him and smiled.

“Now you’ll pass the circus detectors, Cheekbones.”

“Don’t,” Neal warned flatly. “Do not.”

But Mozzie was too busy grinning and rubbing his hands together happily as he led the way out and filled him in on the rest of his phone call with Gordon Taylor, not noticing that Neal had defaulted to his mid-con plastic but highly believable (to the untrained eye) smiles to cover the unhappiness mounting with each passing second. Mozzie was too excited to catch on, which made it easier for Neal to ignore it himself.

****

Dr. Groves’ practice was not in an office. The big red and white striped tent was broken up into separate rooms by screens and partitions. It was much larger on the inside than a normal private building with a huge open area that spread out wide beyond the hall of rooms. There was a trapeze and tightrope fixed high in that area with a huge white net stretched out below.

Peter and Diana met Neal and Mozzie inside, and it took a tremendous effort not to lose it at the sight of them. Diana was dressed in a black and white checkered jester’s catsuit, complete with a hat with bells on the ends. She could have been the hightlight of a costume party with the tight fit and black heels. Peter, on the other hand, was a classic clown in a polka dotted white jumpsuit and had on, to Neal’s extreme delight, a bright red nose.

He didn’t whip his phone out on the spot, but it took an effort. “Oh. Oh, this might be the best day of my life. There will be pictures. So many pictures.”

Peter took cursory glances at them but quickly chose to stare at the ground. “Do not let me see any reflective surfaces.”

Fear and humiliation were compelling reasons to avoid mirrors.

Mozzie frowned at Neal as he moved his hands to his pockets. “You look like a hot mime. I look like a hobo. I hated this then, and I hate it now.”

Neal smiled, squaring his shoulders at the compliment. It was hard to look good in a layer of whiteout makeup. It was nice to be flattered even if it came with a tone of irritation.

Peter’s discomfort moved him to a rare moment of agreement with Mozzie. “Yeah, why do you look like that? You’re not even a clown.”

Mozzie gestured towards him. “He’s clown adjacent. He’s circus passing, and that’s all we really need to get to the bottom of who killed the clown formerly known as Mopey, which was a far more apt moniker than Smiley, I can tell you.”

He led Neal towards the nearest room behind a cotton candy pink flap of tarp, parting from Peter and Diana as they made their way to their Tightrope, Tight Bonds seminar that Neal really hoped there would be video of later.

Dr. Groves stood from where she was sitting cross-legged on top of a huge drum and brightened at the sight of them as they entered. She was wearing a ringmaster’s costume in a full glittering blue tailed jacket and black Daisy Duke slacks, because of course she was, in the weirdest counseling office he’d ever seen. There were rings of various sizes hanging suspended from the ceiling and various neon beanbags arranged with no pattern or order on the floor between her meditation drums and what looked suspiciously like flammable batons.

“Mozzie!” Groves went up and hugged him. She was a short woman with orange hair that billowed around her in a blowout that successfully mimicked a lion’s mane if that was what she was going for.

“Lenora, it’s good to see you,” Mozzie said as he pulled back and held a hand towards Neal in introduction. “This is my partner, Neal.”

It didn’t even sound weird to hear since they introduced each other in exactly that way a hundred times before while networking with other criminals. That was what they were, partners, specific definition notwithstanding.

Neal shook her hand and mirrored the infectious grin she was aiming at them both. In his experience, counselors tried for an air of passive pleasantness but tended to remain professionally aloof. Groves was beaming like she got a blank check from Warren Buffett.

She squeezed Mozzie’s padded shoulder. “I was so happy to hear you came out. I always suspected it was an underlying reason your relationship with Betty was so strained. Isn’t life much freer now?”

“I—” Mozzie glanced at Neal who said nothing and everything with a gaze. He turned back to her and must have decided to lean into the skid. “Yes. My chains have unclasped, and I roam the world a free man now.”

“Glad to hear it.” She skipped - that was the closest word for the hoppy thing she did when she turned around - back to her drum and climbed up while she waved at an overly large black and white striped beanbag chair across from her. “Sit in the love bag.”

That sounded vaguely disgusting, but Neal was easy and sunk into the big chair, feeling the peanuts inside squish under his weight. Mozzie sat down beside him, and gravity and a poorly designed doubles chair combined efforts to smush their sides together. Mozzie’s patched shoulder pressed warmly against his arm.

“I’m sorry you’re having trouble. We’ll start small here, chat things out, then get you into some helpful workshops to turn your spiritual frowns upside down.”

Neal’s eyebrows went up. “Spirit smiles are good.”

Mozzie nodded.

“How long have you two been together?”

They glanced at each other, having decided beforehand to mostly skirt the truth since lies always worked better with a foundation they didn’t have to remember with flashcards and quizzes.

“Pretty much since I first got to New York when I was eighteen,” Neal said.

Mozzie was his first friend, and he didn’t think his green younger self would have been all too surprised to discover that the odd couple friendship would spiral into the rock solid partnership it was today. Mozzie wasn’t a person he met in the city. He was a paranoid little hurricane that somehow disrupted his clear weather and simultaneously helped keep storms at bay. Neal knew pretty early on in the friendship that Mozzie wasn’t going to be somebody he lost in the noise of the city. He never was any good at taking shelter from hurricanes.

He figured Mozzie, with his safe houses, burner phones, and distrust of literally everyone, would probably have taken his attachment to Neal over the years as more of a shock. Everybody had exceptions. Neal happened to be Mozzie’s.

The session started out on the right track. Mozzie inquired about the clowning community since that was apparently a thing that existed. Groves hadn’t seen or heard from most of their mutual acquaintances since she made the move from Detroit to New York and inquired about Betty who Mozzie was happy to report he hadn’t heard or seen either.

“She didn’t follow you up here, did she?” Neal asked since he would have liked to meet Mozzie’s ex that got him into this whole weird thing and also, because it helped segue into their next line of questioning. She confirmed that she hadn’t. “Because I heard that a few of your clients followed you here when you decided to uproot your practice. That was part of the reason I agreed to come see you. I figured if you inspired that kind of loyalty among your patients, you must have something useful up your sleeve.”

Groves winced and leaned forward on the drum to inform them, “Actually, only two of them did. You’ll remember them, Mozzie. The Blodens? You knew the husband as Mopey. He was going by Smiley now, part of my suggestion to change his mood from the superficial outside to the inner spirit. He was killed this week.”

Mozzie played shock like a hammy actor in a B-movie. “No?!”

Groves nodded, buying it hook, line, and overdramatic sinker.

“What happened to him?” Neal asked.

“I wouldn’t know. You know Smiley.” She shrugged at Mozzie. He nodded, not bothering with the fake mourning he forced in front of Peter and Crue. “He quit counseling a couple of months ago. Haven’t seen him since. I wouldn’t be surprised if— Well. You did know Smiley.”

The repetition seemed significant. If the guy was as unpleasant as they made him out, finding his killer might prove to be tricky business. Jerks always had a line of potential killers behind their nasty remarks or violent tendencies. That wasn’t good news for Mozzie. He wanted to clear his name and close this case as soon as possible.

Mozzie definitely did too if only to move freely in New York without the threat of imminent arrest and to make his date with Gordon Taylor this weekend. Neal shifted unhappily at the reminder, feeling silly that the grudge was still festering there.

“Let’s not talk about that unpleasantness anymore,” Groves advised and held open palms towards them. “Tell me about the trouble between you two. Let’s heal this bridge before the suspension lines snap.”

Mozzie took a breath to respond with the script they laid out on the way, made up nonsense about trying to keep the spark alive after being together so long, but Neal felt compelled by a dark will not his own, something that was born from days of what he then thought were screened calls and grew in size at Mozzie’s enthusiastic announcement about the new job he had with Gordon Taylor right on the heels of the last one ending.

“He’s cheating on me,” he said and knew better than to look at Mozzie who he could see whip towards him out of the corner of his eye. “With this guy, Jordan Tyler.”

Not his most subtle moment. But once it was out, it was out. As was his usual pattern, he got out of it by digging deeper.

“He’s a good guy: charismatic, smart, creative. Really ambitious. The kind of guy that inspires others. Fair and at the top of his game. I guess Mozzie got taken in by it.”

Groves turned wide eyes on Mozzie, surprised more than scandalized that he would cheat on his nice mime with some charmer. Mozzie sputtered, and he pressed harder into Neal’s side as he turned towards him and back to Groves for a moment as he tried to improvise off-script while addressing the embarrassingly obvious call-out Neal was making without warning.

“I am not a cheater,” he declared at last. Groves gave him a don’t-hide-your-demons-from-me look, and he pointed at her defiantly. “I am loyal to a fault.”

Neal took a shovel and dug the hole into a crater, pushing more than what was reasonable or fair but pushing just the same. “He went on vacation with him last week. To one of the most romantic places on Earth, which happens to be one of my most beloved places. Probably the most.”

New York was his steady relationship. He loved it, couldn’t imagine leaving it in a forever way, though other places tempted him. Paris was a great love. The city in his dreams. Dreams that couldn’t be glimpses of reality with the anklet on.

Mozzie wasn’t caving to the heat of the accusation. “It was not a vacation. It was work.”

And they were definitely talking without talking now. Based on the taken aback look on Mozzie’s face that he caught at a glance, it was obvious Mozzie hadn’t thought the trip had grieved Neal in any way, certainly not to the extent that warranted being roasted in fake therapy.

Still, Neal pushed, and it became clear that it was eating at him more than he wanted to acknowledge that Mozzie had taken off without a thought to how Neal would have felt about it, agreeing to another trip without discussing it with him first either.

He locked eyes with Groves as he responded to the excuse, “A work trip in my favorite city. Which he knows. And went anyway. Without me.”

Mozzie actually shook himself at that, twisting in the love bag, which sounded more gross the more Neal repeated it in his head, and bumped their knees together to gawk at him.

“You couldn’t come!” he exclaimed. “You’re… glued to your work here.” He appealed to Groves, “He’s bound to it. His boss would never let him get away. I couldn’t bring him with me.”

Neal wanted to stop now. It was getting too personal and straying from the core mission too far. It would be hard to slip more questions in about Smiley when the fighting wasn’t fake. Wanting to stop and stopping were conflicting realities.

“You didn’t have to go without me either.” Neal finally looked at him straight on, right into the bewilderment on Mozzie’s face. “You could have let Tyler bring someone else to help him with the presentation. It didn’t have to be you.”

“It was a great opportunity! And I’d say the bonus I got, that _we_ got, speaks for itself. That ‘vacation’ is going to pay for a lot of hats. And wine,” Mozzie added, because if he didn’t have a glass in his hand, he was thinking about the next one. Almost always from Neal’s own supply. He didn’t drink half of what he bought and had to shop with how much wine Mozzie would need until his next trip to the store in mind. “You’re saying you wouldn’t have gone if you had the chance?”

“I’m saying I _couldn’t_ , and you chose to go anyway.” He was surprised by the vehemence in his own words, but there it was.

He couldn’t pretend that Mozzie partnering up with someone else, traveling that far to take on a job without him didn't bother him, with all the risks involved, reaping the rewards Neal had complicated feelings about sharing when he had no part in the job’s success; it all made him unhappy in a way that was difficult to ignore. At least while sitting in an uncomfortable love bag across from a woman in black tights and a top hat, taking notes with a feather quill.

Mozzie was quiet a long moment while Neal stared at a baton on the floor and Groves waited for them to break their own silence, before giving a small, helpless shrug and saying, “I had no idea you felt this way.”

“Yeah, well.” Embarrassment kept him from looking back again. “It’s not fun to be left behind.”

“I’d never leave you behind,” Mozzie replied, with a comforting tinge of insistence. He clarified in his vague way, “Not _behind_ behind. It was just a job. And I know you miss going to your favorite places whenever you feel like it. I didn’t mean to rub it in your face.”

Neal sighed, feeling guilty for bringing it up in the first place. “You didn’t.”

He really hadn’t. Neal’s issues were his own.

“The whole thing is just… You know.”

Mozzie nodded. He did. As happy as Neal was in New York, he yearned to be free. To go where he wanted and be his own master. Watching Mozzie flit around helping someone else pull off an extraordinary job was just a reminder of the chain and ball around his ankle, but it wasn’t Mozzie’s fault that he wasn’t free. It wasn’t fair to demand he pause his life just because he was stuck.

He leaned forward over his knees and glanced over his shoulder, caught Mozzie’s soft, contrite smile and tried to return it.

It was a long moment before Groves decided to interrupt the slowly easing tension. “I was going to assign you two to the Fire Breathing Passion workshop, but I think you’ll get a lot more out of the Juggling Your Feelings exercises.”

She gave them the time of the next class tomorrow and sent them out with homework to ‘enter each other’s ring’ tonight. Neal was confused and unwilling to ask. Mozzie simply blushed. Maybe he’d entered Betty’s ring back in the day.

They stepped back out into the hall, and the unusual silence between them stretched a beat towards awkwardness. Mozzie seemed very interested in the dirt floor, and Neal sort of wished he had stuck to the script. Mozzie didn’t need to feel guilty for doing exactly what they always did—finding a score and putting pieces in motion to land it.

“So,” Mozzie broke the silence first since he was the lesser coward at the moment, “should I call Taylor and pull out of the job?”

The last thing he wanted to do was damage Mozzie’s street cred as a reliable guy on a job by guilting him into dropping out without much notice, especially when it was led by someone with Gordon Taylor’s clout in the underworld. Word could spread fast if he took it badly, and that could damage contacts for them going forward with their own cons. It was best to let it go. He hardly grasped his own point of contention anyway.

“No. You’re right. Extra padding in our accounts couldn’t hurt. Maybe just keep your phone on this time. I can help talk you out of trouble even if I’m not there to get into it with you.”

Mozzie looked unsure but nodded with assurances, “I will keep you on retainer. The unofficial sixth man.”

Neal appreciated that. He wasn’t out of the game. He was just out of the international game. For now.

“You really enjoy working with him?” he asked, surprising himself since it wasn’t a question that required asking. He knew Mozzie got on well with Taylor. So had he when they pulled the job on Yankee Stadium. The guy was a legend and a gentleman thief, both things he shared Mozzie’s admiration for.

Still, Mozzie considered it and the underlying comparison Neal hadn’t meant to make between Taylor and himself. Even knowing Mozzie was in the game long before Neal ever showed up in New York with a fresh smile and quick hands, it was strange for him (and inexplicably uncomfortable) when Mozzie went off on a con that he wasn’t involved in at all. He cherished his friendships. Now he knew he sometimes coveted them.

As was often the case with Mozzie, he used someone else’s words to express his feelings on the subject.

“‘Ours has been a contented and reasonable partnership, he with his solo jobs and I with mine. But always with work and play together, conducted under a satisfactory system of dual control.’” Amelia Earhart. Neal ignored the fact that she was talking about her husband, not her partner in crime (unless her life story was even more extraordinary than history recorded) when she said that. “My partner just happens to be quarantined to the city at present. And Italy beckons.”

It was fair, even if Neal didn’t like it.

They had other things to worry about now. “We’ve still got a murder to solve.”

Mozzie was happy to let the topic go.

“Let’s solve it. This polyester is itching. Clown costumes are not made with the finest silk.” He turned towards the tent’s exit. “We’ll crack the case right after I use one of the facility’s high-class outdoor lavatories. Tents would catch on more if they were better known for their indoor plumbing,” he grumbled as he started off.

“I’ll meet you outside,” Neal replied. “I’m going to find Peter.”

Hopefully, in a situation ridiculous enough to be suited for the slideshow he was dying to upload as Peter’s screensaver when he wasn’t in his office.

He wasn’t disappointed. Peter was putting his foot down with an instructor and outright refusing to walk out on the beginner’s tightrope even though it was only suspended a foot off the ground. Diana was midway across when Peter stepped down from the stool at the starting point and shook his head emphatically. Neal was still able to sneak several pictures of him in costume with his phone while he was arguing with the instructor about the alleged merits of learning to put yourself on the line for and with your partner.

Diana made it to the other end and hopped down with a satisfied smirk. “Listen to the man, Peter, or we’ll never learn to walk our internal tightrope.”

Peter scowled. He caught sight of Neal and walked over.

“Don’t.”

Neal was all smiles. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You could always go back to prison, you know.”

“I will not utter a word.” The pictures said a thousand each anyway.

He didn’t have time to tease him any further, because Mozzie was back in the tent and tearing through the hallway to the open area they were in. Neal spun around and immediately balked.

Mozzie’s clothes were splattered with red all over his chest and jacket. He didn’t appear to be injured, but he was frazzled and bloodstained.

Neal’s eyes went wide at the sight of him. He moved forward and only stilled his hand while he was reaching for him when Peter called out a warning not to touch him. His heart plummeted. Peter was already in FBI mode, and Mozzie’s hobo clown costume was evidence now.

He dropped his arm to his side reluctantly but leaned forward and tried to catch Mozzie’s quickly darting, tent scanning, huge paranoid eyes anyway.

“What happened?”

“What happened?” Mozzie exclaimed, gesturing wildly. “What happened is I couldn’t use the restroom because the toilet was occupied by the corpse of a red-nosed clown!”

He pointed at Peter’s red nose like it was somehow at fault.

Neal frowned. “Breathe, Moz.”

Mozzie was in a spiral, and calming down was not on the table. “I just found a very large dead clown in a porta-potty. I’ll choose when to breathe or not.”

Neal held placating hands up towards him. Getting hysterical wasn’t going to keep the situation under control.

“Do you know who it is?” Peter asked.

Mozzie nearly shouted, incredulous, “I forgot to ask him his name. I was too busy being shocked at how dead he was!”

Peter glowered.

“Moz,” Neal plead. They were gathering attention. Soon, everyone would be aware of what was going on, and they needed to get ahead of the narrative fast.

“How did you get blood on you?” Diana asked, and it was more than a tad ridiculous to be discussing a murder while wearing a hat with bells on it.

“I tried to check that he was really dead and not in need of immediate services— He’s not, by the way. His deadness is at peak lack of life.”

Peter cut in, “Mozzie.”

“He had a trick flower on him. Didn’t I say I hated those things!” he griped as an aside to Neal who nodded to get him to keep going. “This one didn’t have water in it. It squirted blood at me. Blood! A blood squirting trick flower! I need to leave right now. I need a full battery of tests and vaccinations and a five liter transfusion to replace my entire blood supply. I am tainted! Contaminated. I could be dying as we speak!”

“ _Moz._ ” Neal tried to reach for his shoulder but again, Peter stopped him, this time knocking him arm down before he made contact.

“I’m calling Crue and Bloom. This place is a crime scene now.” Peter brought his phone to his ear and plucked the round red nose off as it rang. “And I’m changing.”

Mozzie tried to dart away before the other Feds got there, but Diana blocked him. Peter had the heart to apologize, but Mozzie found the body, was a witness and physical evidence. Not to mention, Neal ruminated miserably, probably the prime suspect now.


	3. Chapter 3

Mozzie was taking the threat of having a murder pinned on him with only the amount of alarmist panic he had in him, which was to say, he was a fake mustache away from running down the stairs of June’s home with a passport with his picture and someone else’s name and vanishing off the face of the planet.

“Goodbye, view.” Mozzie swept an arm out as he looked towards the terrace in the kitchen, scotch jostling in his other hand after Neal unhappily watched him begin to mix drinks when the wine ran out. “Goodbye, Chrysler Building. Goodbye, New York.”

Neal intercepted an attempt to take a drink, took the glass out of his hand, and set it down on the table. It wasn’t his fourth or his second (Neal lost track after the third), and even Mozzie was capable of alcohol poisoning.

He arched an eyebrow. “Goodbye me?”

At present, Mozzie was more concerned by Crue’s obvious suspicion of him and the possibility of an impending warrant than whether or not his pals went in the rearview. “You can visit.”

Neal put his leg up on the nearest chair, lifting his pants up to expose the ankle monitor. “Can I, Moz?”

Reality put a damper on the enthusiasm of his grand departure speech. Mozzie reached for the confiscated glass. Neal slid it out of reach.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked, in full-scale wild gesturing mode. “I’m not going to the big house. I cannot be caged, Neal! I would lose my feathers, wither, and die.”

After giving a statement and squirming under the suspicious gaze of Crue and her partner, hope of seeing the case quickly closed slipped away. Neal had begun mentally plotting their next move in the investigation while Mozzie had spent the walk back to his apartment wondering if he was being intentionally framed.

(“By an old acquaintance?” Neal had asked.

Mozzie stopped right there on the sidewalk and proceeded to fall down the rabbit hole of his own paranoia.

“By the government! Think about it! ‘Mozzie’ and ‘clowns’ are both six letters. Six letters! You know what else is six letters? ‘Framed’! That’s three sixes, Neal. I always suspected the devil’s number to be the code for the government puppeteers bent on suppressing those with the sight and ability to expose them!”

“Okay.” Neal took that as his cue to spin him around with a pat on the back and get him to some medicinal wine as quickly as possible.)

That was a frightened liver ago. Once Mozzie started down a doomsday spiral, it was hard to slow the momentum.

Neal took a shot anyway. “You are not going to jail. I would never let that happen. Neither would Peter.” The snort he got at that made him insist, “Not for something you didn’t do.”

He made a play for the bottle since he couldn’t get his glass back, but Neal snatched it before he could, which only spurred Mozzie’s bad mood.

“Excuse me if I choose not to trust the man who put you in prison and on that leash to protect my freedom.”

“Then trust me,” Neal snapped back. “If it looks like you’re going down for this, all we need is a pair of scissors and a destination and we’ll run.”

He clipped his tracker before. It wasn’t made of titanium. It wouldn’t come to that anyway.

Mozzie shook his hands, wide eyes going urgent with impatience. “Why wait? I disappear, and if they solve Smiley’s murder—good for them, and I’ll make my grand return. If they don’t, I’m in the clear, sipping champagne in Florence.”

It was the first time that Italy triggered a rush of bad feelings in Neal. That meant Mozzie already had a destination in mind, and why not? With a job already lined up, working for Gordon Taylor would help give him an even better cushion to run on, especially if he ran into trouble accessing what remained of their treasure.

He made an appeal to his reasonable side, which was shrinking by the second. “You leave now, and Crue and Bloom will take it as an admission of guilt. They’ll stop looking for the real killer. We can figure this out, but you have to stay.”

“I’m a runner, Neal. I run. Staying goes against my nature.”

It was only with slight bitterness that Neal replied, “You get used to it.”

Neal’s phone buzzed in his pocket. It was Peter. He answered it, setting it on the table on speakerphone.

Peter’s voice came through loud and clear. _“Has Mozzie hopped to another continent yet?”_

“It is not the business of you or the rest of the government which continent I’m occupying.” Mozzie’s gripe was quickly followed by a swipe for the bottle.

Neal set his jaw with a half-shake of his head, backing up to the sink and holding the neck of the bottle towards the drain with a threatening tilt. He wasn’t going to play Keep Away all night.

“Moz, I swear…”

Defeated in the face of a cruel waste of booze, Mozzie raised his hands in surrender. “Fine. I concede. _This_ battle.”

He made a mental note to lock his liquor cabinet before they went to sleep to prepare for the next one.

“He’s not going anywhere,” Neal said for Peter’s benefit to a frown from Mozzie that seriously undermined that promise. He met his eyes defiantly and implored Peter, “Tell me you have a lead.”

_“Not a lead but another clue. That trick flower that squirted you—It shot out type O blood. Our new victim—”_

“The porta-potty clown.”

_“—is type AB.”_

Neal turned bewildered eyes towards Mozzie’s alarmed ones. “What does that mean?”

“Third victim?! I can’t go down for three dead clowns, Neal! I’ll get three life sentences, and - barring being cryogenically frozen, a service not currently being offered to prisoners - I’d _never see the light of day again_ except in a yard with my prison gang.”

Neal shook his head. “You would not have a prison gang.”

“Oh! So I get to be stuck in prison for three hundred years _and_ be lonely. Sounds great. I’ll be packing now.”

_“Did he say packing?”_

“Snacking!” Mozzie covered, poorly. “I have a sudden hankering for Ritz crackers and fine cheese.”

“Don’t eat cheese,” Neal warned. Mozzie’s cheese processing problems did not need to be added to the list of things they had to get through.

_“We’re running the DNA through the system to see if we get a match. Diana and I got made at the crime scene today by a couple other clients. That means the internal investigation is all on you and Mozzie now. Don’t miss your couples therapy tomorrow.”_

“Couples clowning,” Neal corrected even though the correction arguably made it worse.

_“Don’t run, Mozzie. We can still work this out.”_

“Run?” Mozzie feigned ignorance. “I would never do something that would inconvenience an investigation being conducted by the FBI.”

It was the lie of the century, dwarfing all of Neal’s cons put together. He had one foot out the door, in Italy. Neal had to make sure the other one didn’t get spooked out of the country after it.

****

It took an uncomplicated, well-practiced switch after Peter’s meeting with Crue for Neal to get ahold of their Smiley murder file and get pictures of all the pages inside on his phone before he had to replace it and dart out of sight. He went through it all at his desk while he was supposed to be looking into the White Collar’s official new case about a jewelry heist. Mozzie’s potential incarceration took priority.

None of what he was finding was encouraging. No other suspects so far, but even without any official charges yet or outright forms, it was clear from the material that there was a case being built against Mozzie.

There had to be a reason Smiley had used his dying breath to spell Mozzie’s name for the authorities to find. According to Mozzie, they didn’t have a contentious history. He’d avoided him as much as possible back in his clowning days, because Smiley had inspired something less than smiles in anyone who had the misfortune of being in his proximity for too long. That wasn’t the makings of an enemy. At most, it was an acquaintance from a past life that was memorable only because of his temper. And, the whole niche clowning thing.

He didn’t see anything that would help them (though it all looked like great news for a hungry DA), but he forwarded everything to Mozzie anyway. His eyes were well trained in combing between lines and finding things no one else saw. Even if most of those things had no basis in reality.

He was scrolling through Lenora Groves’ website for her counseling when he was startled by a woman leaning over his desk and peeking at his screen.

“Oh. Dr. Graves.” It was Kelly Knight, the trapeze artist that tripped over Smiley’s body. She was out of costume and wearing a crop top and sweats, hair tied up in a ponytail, in remarkable shape for a woman her age. She must have been in for round two of questioning from Bloom and his partner.

“Kelly, hi.” He smiled and corrected her, “It’s Groves, actually.”

“Graves is what Smiley called her,” she explained. “Just about the only thing I knew about him was that he really wanted new costumes and he wanted to drive Groves to an early grave. Funny how fate turns out, huh? And also very sad.”

He narrowed his eyes. “How do you mean?”

“I've only been here a few weeks, but you couldn’t ride your unicycle by him without hearing about his exposé. He made a whole site so people could see her for who she really is or whatever. ClowningToTheGrave? I don’t think it got much traffic outside the community.”

“The circus community?” Neal asked, starting to feel excited.

She nodded and groaned as Bloom caught her eye from upstairs and beckoned her up for questioning. She waved and left Neal to look up the website. He grinned at his screen and fired off the link in an email.

Peter wandered over when he finished sending. “Don’t you need to go juggle your feelings?”

He stood up and grabbed his phone from the desk. “I’m on my way out. Look at the link I just sent you. Mozzie might not be the only one who’s less than mournful over Smiley’s death.”

“Oh?”

Neal grinned. Italy might have to wait for Mozzie after all.

****

They were back in Groves' tent in new costumes in one of the smaller partitioned-off areas, waiting for their instructor to start the class. There were three other couples on the other side of the room, which he was filing as an impressive amount of people since zero people seemed more likely.

Neal stuck with the mime aesthetic but switched to red lips and suspenders with heavier eye makeup. Mozzie had drawn a bright green four-leaf clover on his cheek this time and was himself a western clown now, complete with a cowboy hat and jeans tucked into boots. Neal hadn’t been able to stop smiling when he met him at his apartment earlier and saw the actual spurs and neon squirt guns tucked into holsters at his hips.

The crime scene outside was still taped off, but the place was open for business.

Mozzie cradled Neal’s phone in his hands as he scrolled through the low-quality but meticulously updated website of Smiley the Clown, aimed directly at disenchanting people from paying for her counseling. There were scant few pictures. It was mostly text posts (black Times New Roman on a white background) talking all about his own personal experiences throughout a staggeringly consistent twenty years of seeing her with his wife.

His favorite post was the most damning, an incoherent frothing mess, dated only a week ago:

_20 yrs & NO PAYOFF!! Wife divorced me! Wouldnt even honk my nose one more time!_

Neal really did not want to know if that was a euphemism.

_CLOWNING TOGETHER WILL NOT SAVE YOU FROM A WIFE WHO HAS ‘FALLEN OUT OF LOVE WITH THE CIRCUS’. GRAVES IS A CRACK! DONT GIVE HER UR MONEY! ALL FAKE! THE ONLY CURE FOR MARRIAGE IS NOT GETTING MARRIED!!_

Mozzie feigned compassion when Neal made him read that one. “I’d honk you one more time, Neal.”

He stifled a smile to stay on track and pointed at the screen. “This is good news, Moz.”

He was surprised that he wasn’t jumping on it, giving him a doubtful shrug. “So Groves killed Mopey because he didn’t like the admittedly terrible efficiency of her couples therapy?”

“Didn’t like her?” There was an entire website dedicated to destroying her business and credibility. “It’s a hate campaign.”

Mozzie handed his phone back to him. “With poor web design to boot. Which is the bigger insult?”

That was easy. “I’m going to go with the picture of her face with the X’s over her eyes and the thought bubble that said ‘I’m an idiot’.”

That, at least, got a nod. “I would respect a decent Photoshop attack. Running a blurry picture through Paint is more offensive than the focused personal attacks.”

It was incredibly shoddy work. Neal wouldn’t have turned that in as an elementary computer lab project. Deranged harassers needed to up their game if they wanted to be taken seriously. Or, better still, rethink their entire lives.

Their instructor came in wearing a nude toned catsuit that made Neal blink in a brief moment of bewilderment at the sudden unasked for nakedness. He registered the spandex from the nip indentions on his chest. The guy was built, had to spend at least three quarters of his life in a gym somewhere, caressing weights as he built more muscle mass in his left bicep than Neal had in his whole body.

Mozzie leaned in to whisper, “Afraid you’re not the hottest one in the room anymore? Having an identity crisis at the prospect?”

Neal rolled his eyes. He didn’t have the ego to support that alleged fear. He did, however, have the confidence and curiosity to ask, “He’s hotter than me?”

Mozzie’s answering little smile avoided the question in the kindest way possible.

The bodybuilder instructor, Manley Steel (birth certificate, or Neal called bullshit), had the couples line up facing each other and passed out a bowling pin to each of them. They had to say one thing that the other person meant to them and then toss the pin for the other to catch, the next person would repeat it, and so on.

Neal started and gave the easiest answer, “You’re my best friend.”

He tossed the pin.

Mozzie caught it with ease that was surprising enough after it flipped through the three feet between them to raise one of Neal’s eyebrows. An old talent he picked up from his time clowning with Betty?

“You’re the only person I trust enough to be business partners with. Or, trust at all,” Mozzie said and tossed one back towards him.

Neal caught it and took a moment to consider before smiling. “You’re my favorite drinking buddy.”

Mozzie grinned, and this time, from the instruction of Manley (Neal never needed a bigger break), they tossed both pins at the same time, each bending their knees and curving in to the catch but not dropping them.

“If I could only choose one person to be trapped on a deserted island with, I’d pick you every time.”

Manley Nips over there didn’t need to know how grounded in reality that admission was. Neal remembered playing jacks on the back deck of their island safe house with an ocean view, remembered molding clay into figures outside in the breeze while Mozzie took blind wine tests across from him at the table.

“You’re the only person I’d wear red lipstick for,” he joked.

“But you’ll wear passion pink willy-nilly,” Mozzie teased.

The pins spun.

And Mozzie was still in a light mood when he unloaded a bomb. “You’re the reason I stay in New York.”

Neal fumbled the pin but caught it before it hit the ground. He thought of Italy, of Gordon Taylor, of all the jobs Mozzie missed out on out of loyalty to Neal. He loved the city, loved consulting for the FBI, working with Peter, and the challenge that came with each new assignment.

But he missed it, traipsing the world, going where he pleased, stealing what he wanted, figuring out the puzzle that would unlock an impenetrable safe or get them out of an impossible jam. They loved the treasure, but they were more like the pirates Mozzie romanticized than the pirates were. It came down to the art of the con, and art was never something that flourished with restrictions and perimeters.

The pang for adventure and thought of Mozzie jumping into it without him, prompted the kind of honesty that Juggle Your Feelings seminars were probably meant to inspire. “I can’t imagine not being together.”

He couldn’t. Not long-term. Mozzie had his back. He had Mozzie’s. That was how it worked. That was the deal. It was why he was going to figure out who killed Smiley and keep Mozzie out of prison and not on the run.

It took an extra second, but they tossed the pins.

Manley commended them on keeping the romance alive and pointed to them as an example for the actual couples dropping their pins and running out of things to say to each other after the first round.

The woman in the huge curly red wig next to him scowled, looking between him and Mozzie miserably and her own husband with contempt. “You two don’t seem anything alike.”

They were completely different on the surface and entirely the same at heart, where it counted.

“What can I say?” Neal stole Mozzie’s cowboy hat, lifting it up with a graceful flip and setting it on his own head. “We have very compatible incompatibilities.”

Mozzie turned wry. “Yes, Neal. We all know you make a very handsome cowboy. Join a rodeo or stop showing off.”

“I’m not sure anyone can pull off ‘cowboy mime’,” Neal protested.

“Then consider yourself a revolutionary,” Mozzie replied, and even if he was making fun of him, Neal got a confident boost in his step. Wasn't his fault. He had a thing for hats.

Manley led them all out of the room and directed them towards the group clowning session in the large open area of the tent where obstacles were set up and four other couples were gathering to start with Dr. Groves.

He watched her closely in her conductor’s outfit. She was so small and energetic. It was hard to picture her killing someone in cold blood. It was easier than believing Mozzie did it, though.

Neal caught his hand and shrugged when Mozzie turned to him in surprise. Everyone else was doing it. Rule one in a successful con was to not stick out. A little conformity could go a long way in selling a lie.

So they walked hand-in-hand over to the obstacle course set up for all of them. Groves laid out the rules. It was simple. All they had to do was make it around the square while holding hands with their partner and not letting go. If they broke contact, they had to go back to the beginning and try again.

Most of the course was a very low balance beam, but there were huge black tires between them that they had to traverse. Seemed easy enough.

Mozzie bumped into his side as he pulled in close and pointed with a glare at the far corner where a man in a full green wig and striped blue jumpsuit with giant frills at the wrists and ankles was arguing with a woman in matching gear. 

“That’s the guy who stole Betty from me!”

Neal looked back at the man with renewed interest, trying to see if he could tell under all the caked on makeup if he was good looking or not. The orange nose and diamonds over his eyes distorted his face beyond a clear opinion.

He heard the breakdown of Mozzie’s relationship with Betty. It was a six month on and off affair that was strained for longer than it was good and ended with her dropping him for a Clarence Teller with little more than a scribbled ‘you don’t take clowning seriously enough, leaving you for Clarence’ note on an index card that she pinned to his corkboard. All told, she didn’t come off as a woman deserving of Mozzie’s unique Mozziness, index card breakup considered.

Still, no one liked being reminded of an ex or the guy an ex left them for.

Comfort seemed like the best route. “She must not have been The One.”

“The One,” Mozzie repeated with a derisive sniff. “There’s only the one you’re with.”

That was a grim view of romance. Neal knew enough about love to reject the cavalier attitude. “You don’t believe that.”

Mozzie kept sending glares intended to pierce and destroy in Clarence’s direction. “You should, considering the sheer volume of _ones_ you go through. Why would you want to narrow that down to one allegedly special person?”

“Because love isn’t numbers.” It was wanting to protect someone with his own life and missing them when they weren’t around. It was waking up in the middle of the night and reaching for them even if they weren’t there. Love was in the art they stole and the art they created and getting that same feeling of wonder and adoration from being near another person.

Mozzie wasn’t in the mood to view it through a softer lens. “Too bad. Numbers are orderly and predictable. Love is just another clown stealing your girl.”

Literally, as it were.

Neal felt compelled to argue the point. “No, that’s just pain. Love is the reason that ending still stings. Because it was good, and it went away.”

Mozzie turned a put out expression his way. “Great. Well, I’m going to start. You stay here and finish writing your poem.”

Neal frowned and followed after him when he stepped far enough forward to tug on his arm.

They made it across the balance beams by creeping along them sideways and only teetered near falling a couple of times near the end. It wasn’t smugness that rose up whenever another couple tipped too far one way and had to start over, but Neal took a sort of pride in how well he and Mozzie maneuvered together. Then again, they got plenty of practice. Every con was a new exercise in teamwork.

They stayed back with Groves when they finished and inquired about the anti-campaign against her online. They didn’t get much more than a comment of disappointment that she was unable to sufficiently help Smiley and his wife overcome their issues through clowning (who would have guessed?) before she excused herself to help a couple that had tipped off the balance beam and needed to start over again for the fourth time. They were gathering themselves for the task with a debate on whose fault all the falling was in a volume growing higher with each accusation of _no, you!_

They didn’t have much more to go on, but they almost made it out without an awkward confrontation between Mozzie and Clarence. That would have been too easy.

“Mozzie, how the heck are you? Seen Betty lately?” For his part, Clarence seemed more than happy to run into him.

Mozzie, on the other hand, remained openly contemptuous. “Not since you seduced her away from me, no.”

“Yeah, Betty was great, huh?” Clarence enthused with a remarkable lack of tact. “I’m with a professional strongwoman now. It’s not going to last much longer.”

That was an oddly honest assessment.

“You in town for Groves’ Wonder Wheelers group too? Haven’t seen you at one of these things in years.”

“Wonder Wheelers?” Neal inquired.

“Yeah,” Clarence said, “back in the old days, Groves gave our clowning group some advanced counseling.”

“What was that like?”

Mozzie gestured dismissively. “It involved a Ferris wheel and lack of common sense. Jelly and Lester are the only people I still talk to from it. Some things are better left forgotten.” True enough, though the Wonder Wheelers sounded like a bowling league or children’s cartoon. He nodded, and Mozzie addressed Clarence. “No, I am not in town for that. I live here now.”

“New York City, huh? Guess everything worked out for you real great. Big city and a nice mime.” Clarence beckoned between them, and Neal realized they were still holding hands. Seemed like a bad idea to let go now while Clarence was paying attention. They parted with curt goodbyes and Mozzie giving him incorrect contact information on purpose.

“He seems nice,” he said as they walked towards the exit.

“We hate him,” Mozzie corrected.

Right. “I meant ‘nice’ in a bad way.”

Mozzie nodded his approval, and they left the tent with their fingers twined and a new common enemy, Clarence’s generally clueless but kind nature notwithstanding.

****

June got a $100,000 bottle of whiskey without even having to play Candy Land for it, and Neal knew exactly what Mozzie was doing when he handed it to her with a ribbon and a compliment on her personhood. He let it sit, but when Mozzie repeated the gesture at Peter’s house later by handing Elizabeth a box with a palm-sized piece of art inside, annoyance rolled over his commitment to stay silent on the issue.

He took him aside while Elizabeth was showing the piece to Peter. “You’re breaking the first rule of going on the run. Never say goodbye.”

Mozzie taught him that. He was feeling cornered and close to fleeing and was broadcasting his departure on a billboard.

He dropped his voice, but Peter had to understand a goodbye gift when he saw one. His loyalty was to the FBI first, so Mozzie needed to be more discreet, no matter what he ended up doing. “This could be forever, Neal. Against my will to escape the fuzz’s incompetence. Don’t worry. I got you the best going away present.”

Now he just felt tired. “What, you don’t want me to come with you?”

Neal was surprised by the softness in Mozzie’s response, blunt the way he always was but skirting the edge of something close to sad. “You’re not coming with me. And… that’s okay. Maybe Paris was a good idea if only to remind me that Mozzie of Neal-And-Mozzie will be okay, even if he’s just Mozzie, on his own.”

Neal could hear the howling of the wolves catching up too, but he wasn’t ready to give up yet. “I told Peter you’re not going anywhere. You’re not. We’re going to figure this out, okay? Have faith.”

It was in too short supply, however. “I have faith in patterns and consistency. History tells me running works.”

Neal’s eyebrows shot up. “Our history of being found by the Feds after a few months and barely making it back to New York? The history where I got caught, went to prison, and got shot, that history?”

“Perhaps we should put history aside,” Mozzie suggested, “and look to the future instead. The future where the only art I get to see are the portraits smeared on the walls in blood by my homicidal cellmate.”

Neal wanted to argue, but Mozzie’s phone vibrated and he frowned as he checked it.

“What?”

Mozzie handed him the phone with the text message from Dr. Groves. “We’ve been cordially invited to a Wonder Wheelers reunion tomorrow night.”

It was a private weekend therapeutic retreat, invitations only going out to the original Detroit Wonder Wheelers who were in town until Sunday.

“This is great.”

He took his phone back and tucked it away in disagreement. “It’s a sleepover. Jelly won't be there, and I haven't heard from Lester in a few months. I think he might have noticed that I stole an extra bottle off him last time he was in town. He's a good guy, but if he doesn't want me to steal his wine, he shouldn't keep it locked in a safe behind a coded room that I can clearly get past with a toolbox and stethoscope. Lazy security is an invitation for theft."

"Uh-huh."

"Everyone else is intolerable. I’m not camping with those freaks.”

“Moz, this gives us a prime opportunity to find proof against Groves. She has motive. She has knowledge of both victims. She knows you. We can’t pass up a chance like this.” They would have a reason to be near her office after-hours without having to contrive anything or further the con.

It was perfect, but Mozzie was too busy scowling at Neal to notice. “You think she killed two people, and you want to spend the night with her?”

Good point. Saving Mozzie from being charged with murder, however, was a better one.

He grinned. “Get your sleeping bag.”

Mozzie grumbled but gave in. He usually did when Neal wanted something. He’d come to rely on that indulgence.

“You’ll get to check Camping in a Circus Tent off the to-do list,” he said wryly.

Neal went with him to say goodbye to the Burkes.

He didn’t blame Peter for leaning in and asking below his breath while Mozzie was hugging Elizabeth, “Should I put a tracking anklet on Mozzie before he goes? I could find one made of indestructible steel.”

Neal didn’t know why he always sorted Mozzie under the rules that applied to normal people. There were normal people, and there were Mozzie people. There was no crossover in the rules.

“And by the end of the night, Mozzie would have one less leg.”

Peter scowled at the truth of it and warned him to keep an eye on him.

“Always do,” he replied. As much as anybody could keep an eye on the invisible man.

They were down to the curb outside when Peter stepped out and hailed them to stop, phone pressed to his ear. He was hanging up as Neal and Mozzie shared confused glances and walked back up the steps.

“What is it?” Neal asked.

Peter looked regretfully at Mozzie. “That was Agent Crue. You’ve officially been moved from a person of interest to a suspect. They want to bring you in for questioning tomorrow.” He glanced at Neal. “They’re not going to accept an assumed name this time.”

Neal didn’t have to turn to feel Mozzie’s feathers twitch, wings ready to spread. There was flight in his eyes, Italian earth under his shoes and who knew where else after that?

The walls started closing in, misery mounting, as Neal realized he was going to have to let Mozzie run.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is the last chapter before the concluding epilogue!

Peter bought them a day. Crue and Bloom agreed to give Mozzie an extra day before bringing him in and arresting him with a promise that Peter himself would escort him into the precinct. A promise that Peter may have meant when he made it but that Mozzie had no intention of complying with. Neal already had several contingency plans if it came to it, ways to distract the Feds without looking like that was his intention to buy Mozzie time and give him a headstart.

They were the first ‘couple’ to arrive at Dr. Groves’ reunion weekend, but she stayed with them and chatted with Mozzie like an old friend instead of a counselor (Neal really did not know how any of this managed to help anybody strengthen their relationship) and never gave them a window to sneak off and rummage through her things.

The small rooms along the opening of the tent were tied closed with golden rope. Only the big open area was being utilized. There were two huge trampolines set up in the middle and two rows of mini rebounder trampolines lined up in front of them. Neal had been alarmed by the tiger cages that looked like giant animal cracker boxes at the back of the tent, but they turned out to be empty and only there as props for an exercise where he and Mozzie had to take turns being locked inside it and confessing the things about their relationship that made them feel trapped so they could transform the feeling from trapped to secure.

“Your choice of accessories,” Mozzie had said when it was his turn, and the snide reference to his anklet - an accessory that was not, in fact, a choice - prompted Neal to fire back from inside the cage, “Your belief that aliens from the Roswell crash are being held in a government controlled internment camp where experiments are being conducted that will one day lead to the release of an E.L.E. level alien virus in the name of population control.”

It trapped him into keeping the leash between them short enough to keep him from completely flying off the rails into an oblivion of conspiracy theories that ended in newspaper over the windows and tinfoil berets.

“Sure, if you file ‘belief’ under the category Knowledgeable of Facts.”

Now they were bouncing face-to-face on separate tiny trampolines to soar towards a healthier relationship, which he seriously figured had more to do with Groves being concerned with the fitness level of her clients and tricking them into a meaningless bout of exercise. At least it was casual clowning, nobody was in makeup or costume. Neal was tired of having to scrub that off his face, though he did sneak pictures of himself before removing it. He liked the heart and the four-leaf clover.

“This is weird. Even for us.”

But Mozzie seemed to be enjoying himself, and Neal was having a hard time keeping a straight face every time his glasses slid farther down his nose with each hop. He wasn’t very interested in the reunion aspect of it, only giving the others that he knew from previous clowning cursory greetings. Lester not being there while the three he disliked the most showed up in I Heart New York t-shirts and smothered him in unwanted hugs was misery for Mozzie and icing for Neal to watch.

“At least Betty’s not here,” Mozzie murmured when he extracted himself from Clarence’s bear hug and urged him back towards his new girlfriend, Jade, who happened to be a strongwoman of impressive biceps. She looked like she could snap both of them over her knee without breaking a sweat.

There were four other couples. Three other people from the original group, including Mozzie’s ex, had left clowning behind them and stopped showing up to these things years ago, three of the couples were still going strong, and Clarence looked to be in honeymoon bliss with Jade when they weren't fighting like they were fixing to break up. Clarence was right. That relationship probably wouldn't last much longer.

Mozzie took one for the team and drew attention to himself as everyone dismounted from the miniature trampolines to begin the Unicycle Unions. He nudged Neal away to slip off to Groves' tent office and made a show of pulling his unicycle out and boasting his supreme talent on one, which hindered Neal’s speedy escape since he couldn't not look back to witness such a claim. Mozzie immediately falling over and making a loud excuse about poor flooring got him going again.

Neal untied the knot at Groves’ tent halfway and darted between the parted tarp flaps inside. He used his phone as a flashlight and made quick work of scanning the place. He wasn’t looking for a smoking gun, though that would have been nice, but anything concrete enough to stall the Feds’ interest in Mozzie and get them pointed in the right direction. Peter would make sure they pushed where the evidence led them, but not even he could turn a blind eye towards Mozzie’s obvious criminal activity against a murder charge, bogus as it would be.

There was a stack of glossy apple red drums in the corner of the room that he originally mistook as actual drums, but closer inspection revealed they were a large kitschy set of drawers. Picking the lock was easy, and a quick scan revealed client files with notes and personal records. He skipped those, though he pulled the file labeled Mozzie/Neal and tucked it under his arm. There was nothing but billing information and binders full of creative clowning ideas in the other drawers.

“Oh Neal?” Mozzie suddenly said very loudly from the unicycling area. “He had to go to the restroom.”

That was his cue. He darted out, retied the tarp, and tossed the file he got into the center of the huge tire outside the room just in time for Groves to walk into view. She hesitated at the sight of him, and he threw on a smile, a full 100 watts to blind her off his trail.

“Porta-potties are a lot classier these days. Your rentals hardly even smell.”

She smiled. “The one that had the corpse did. But that probably had more to do with the dead guy.”

Neal managed to push out a laugh, but his face fell when her back was turned to lead him back into the room. Too bad morbid humor wasn’t good enough proof against her.

Group clowning confessions were next and awkward, to say the least. They sat in a big circle and passed a baton around to share from their private lives, in which Neal learned far too much about the exhibitionist love making of Clarence and Jade.

Mozzie took the baton from him like it was used during the detailed acts and made up a confession of their own, “Neal and I prefer sex that includes walls and a ceiling.”

He passed the baton to Neal who gave him his best wicked grin and added, “Except for the patio stuff.”

The baton passed on, and Mozzie leaned in to whisper, “I am far too dignified to screw around without roof-cover under the prying eyes of NSA satellites.”

Paranoia induced modesty was hard to buy, considering the amount of times Mozzie had asked to air-dry on his terrace after using his shower. Neal always shot him down, but the requests were genuine. Neal hated to think of what June might one day walk in on while Mozzie was lounging around his apartment unattended.

Neal responded with the skepticism that claim deserved, “With the amount of wine you drink, I could see you mistaking a public fountain for a private pool if you were feeling slutty.”

His eyes were simultaneously amused and self-deprecating. “I’ll have to avoid fountains in Italy, or the Feds here will get me when I’m deported for indecent exposure.”

Neal laughed, but it didn’t feel very funny. He was tired of the law dictating how his life played out. At least his choices had led to his monitor. Mozzie shouldn’t go down for something he would never have done in a million years. Killing wasn’t his style. Except for that one time he put a six million dollar hit on Keller. …But that was just the once. Attempted murder by proxy didn’t count.

They went through the motions with everybody else until Groves finally announced bedtime and sorted the five couples out to climb up on the two giant trampolines with blankets to sleep. They got lucky enough to get the trampoline with only one other couple on it while the other one piled on with six people.

Mozzie laid on his back, arm bent under his head and tossed their balloon patterned blanket over both of them as Neal laid down beside him a few inches away. The trampoline was surprisingly comfortable and much better than sleeping on the ground, though they didn’t plan on sleeping. They settled in to wait for everybody else to fall asleep so they could go look through the file he tossed in the tire and continue their snooping if that turned up nothing.

He looked around at everyone else preparing for bed and promptly removed his gaze from the vicinity of Jade and Clarence in case they got any exhibitionist ideas while he was within viewing range.

He turned his head sideways to look at Mozzie’s profile in the darkened tent.

“I think we’re supposed to be more snuggly,” he said, half as a joke and half because successful cons were about the details. They weren’t internal investigators, they were a couple; that ruse would keep the others off their backs while they searched for the damning information they needed on Groves.

Mozzie peered at him a moment before saying, “I offer my shoulder as substitute for a pillow. But if you get handsy, I’m shouting fire.”

Neal fought back a laugh and scooted over into Mozzie’s side, resting his head on Mozzie’s shoulder and finding a comfortable spot with surprising ease. Mozzie was warm and soft; didn’t make a half-bad pillow.

There was nothing to do after that but wait. And stew.

He found himself replaying the cavalier but somewhat somber way that Mozzie had suggested that he would be on the run alone and asked without deciding if he wanted to ask, “Why are you so convinced I wouldn’t come with you if you ran?”

Evading cops with Mozzie was second nature. Hell, it was first nature. There wasn’t much he did more or better than trying not to get caught doing something illegal together. The not getting caught part was a high he chased more than the gold they stole sometimes.

Mozzie’s answer seemed to blow that off. “Only the fact that you wouldn’t. You have a whole life here.”

“A life which you are a large part of,” he argued.

“You flatter me.”

“Facts aren’t flattery.” He wasn’t sure why Mozzie’s matter-of-fact dismissal of the idea of Neal coming with him was bothering him so much, but it was having an inflammatory effect on his temper. “You run, I run; I thought that was the deal.”

“No. _You_ run, I run, is the deal. I wouldn’t expect you to come with me, and I wouldn’t ask. Especially since you could just meet me in a few years after you get off-anklet without having to evade the Feds. I don’t want to be the reason you screw up your deal and have to outrun the fuzz forever.”

Neal tried to imagine an indeterminate amount of years without seeing Mozzie. His wine cabinet would suffer fewer assaults, but there would be a hole that no amount of trashy conspiratorial tabloids could sufficiently fill. It brought him down and eviscerated the last of the mini-trampoline induced endorphins.

“Or, you know, not even then would be okay,” Mozzie went on. “I know you’re attached. To the city, I mean. We could always send coded messages to each other through Craig’s List ads to catch up, the crass modern model of newspaper codes of the past.”

Inexplicable, red-hot irritability flared up at his casual minimization of their friendship.

Neal propped himself up on his arm, the trampoline stretching and giving under the movement, and looked down at him against his side. “Why do you keep doing that? Acting like I wouldn’t care if you vanished into thin air? I’d care, Moz. I didn’t like it when you were running a job in Paris without me. We’re partners. I’m supposed to be there for you too, not just the other way around. I’d care.”

He was being earnest, and Mozzie must have seen that because there was a moment of pause where Neal hoped he was taking the point. He didn’t want to be the kind of shit friend that took the throne at the center of the universe and expected everyone to spin around him accordingly. That wasn’t how partnership worked. Hell or high water, whatever way he could help, he would. Hell was just a place with a sturdier lock. They hadn’t been there without picking their way out. This was no different.

“Fine,” Mozzie allowed. “You’d be lost without me. You could slick a Slip ‘N Slide with your tears. You still can’t come with me if for no other reason than to feed me information on any hunters that get close and to keep pestering the suits to find the real killer so I can once again kiss the hand of Lady Liberty.”

He had a point, but he didn’t intend to let it get that far.

Neal thought about their options, Mozzie’s name written in blood, and fountains in Italy as he settled back down against Mozzie’s side and accidentally fell asleep. Mozzie really was very warm.

 

“Neal…”

“Hmm…” Neal pressed his face against a soft chest where his arm was curled and tried to surface back to wakefulness, but sleep was a clingy mistress. He slipped further in its embrace.

Mozzie gave him a gentle shake and whispered, “Wake up. They’re out.”

Bleary-eyed, he peered around through the dark and listened through various baritones of snores before nodding and extricating himself from Mozzie’s side. They scooted to the side of the trampoline and over the metal rail, carefully quiet as they strained the springs, but nobody stirred.

Groves was asleep on her bean bags, the flaps of her office tarp hanging open slightly. Neal crept to the tire, Mozzie close at his back, retrieved the file from inside and hurried back where they could easily slip onto their trampoline camp spot, taking refuge behind a tiger cage. They sat with their backs to it out of sight, glowing phone screens out as they opened the folder.

Groves was a meticulous note taker. The papers included notes about their session and the observations she had made about them from their group activities.

“Check it out, Moz.” Neal pointed to a scribbled line beneath the header First Impressions: _Unlikely lovers but strangely compatible, predict long-haul._ “Looks like we’re going the distance.”

“What’s so strange about our compatibility?” he countered. “You have a bottomless stash of wine, and I am—”

“An alcoholic.”

Mozzie faced him in the shadowed light of the glowing phones. “I prefer ‘aficionado’.”

Neal smiled and went back to scanning the pages, sides pressed together so they could read in tandem.

_Foundation of friendship. Strong base for a relationship._

_Indulge each other’s idiosyncrasies._

_Shared sense of humor._

_Mozzie seems much happier with Neal than he was with Betty._

A smile flicked across Neal’s lips that he was quick to rein in.

Mozzie murmured, “I don’t see any footnotes about killing a bunch of people.”

No, but Neal couldn’t knock ‘ _Mozzie appears untrusting of Neal’s commitment to the relationship_ ’ from the forefront of his thoughts, because she picked up on the one thing that had been nagging him lately. It was an issue that stood out to her even when approaching their interactions from the wrong angle. That had to mean there was merit to it. The sore spot was interrupted by Mozzie’s phone alerting him of a new picture message.

It was a picture of a plate of glass from Gordon Taylor.

“What’s the job?” Neal asked.

“Don’t know yet.” Mozzie eyed the picture thoughtfully. “Clue?”

Glass could indicate any number of jobs, though its own transparency was stark compared to how close to the chest Taylor was holding information.

“How long do you think you’ll be gone this time?” Neal asked, trying for a casual tone despite his interest.

“I thought just a couple of days, but it might turn into a week or so. When in Rome… you should, explore Rome.”

Neal nodded. “Stay away from the Piazza Navona.”

Mozzie’s expression turned perplexed. “Why?”

“I wouldn’t want you to get drunk and skinny-dip in the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi.”

Mozzie’s shoulder shook against him as he snuffed out a laugh and attempted to refocus on the file. Neal did the same, though he was less distracted by what the job was going to be in Italy than the pang in his chest telling him he didn’t want him to go.

It was an illogical problem, so he didn’t bring it up again. He wouldn’t have such strong feelings about it if his anklet didn’t feel heavier every time it came up. Mozzie’s freedom reminded him of his captivity. It wasn’t Mozzie’s fault he wasn’t in control of his own life, so Neal had no right to try to control Mozzie’s.

They flipped past the old pictures that Groves kept from way back when she first knew Mozzie to get to the rest of the notes. Some of them were even Polaroids, which elicited a comment from Neal about how the honorable thing to do would be to retire the historical pieces to a museum somewhere. That got him an elbow from Mozzie who declared his fossils his own. They were going through billing information when Peter called with news on the investigation from his end.

He had the proper channels under directives to inform him first, so he was the first to know when they identified the body of the second victim. It was a fifty-five year old man named Boris Weatherby. Peter was heading into the office to get a jump on the lead before Mozzie was supposed to be hand-delivered but promised to call if anything new broke.

Neal relayed the news to Mozzie after hanging up, and he flipped a gasket and nearly woke everyone up despite Neal’s emphatic gesture to lower his volume.

“That was Boris? Boris was the porta potty clown?! He was an original Wonder Wheeler with me and Betty and Clarence.”

“And Smiley?”

Mozzie nodded.

Two dead clowns from the same niche counseling group was not a coincidence, and Mozzie’s name in the carpet was one more arrow in that direction. It had to be Groves. He wasn’t sure on the motive yet, but she had access and a connection to all of them, even went so far as to arrange reunions with the old clients. It had to be her.

“You didn’t recognize him?”

Mozzie wasn’t shouting anymore, but he was just as incredulous. “He was a hundred pounds lighter when I knew him, and it was kind of hard to notice his features beneath the clown makeup, what, with all the stab wounds and running away. Look, I’ll find him.”

He took the file and flipped back to the pictures that they hadn’t taken the time to look at, hurrying through the stack until he found a group shot. He held it out to him and pointed at a rail thin man that was definitely hard to compare at a glance to the heavyset man found dead in the restroom outside the tent, but his eyes wandered and surprise struck him.

Neal caught his wrist before he could pull the picture away and pointed to a woman in the center of the photo who a much younger Mozzie had his arm around. It took a moment of squinting, but even with a different hair color and style, wearing outdated time appropriate clothes, it was definitely her. But Mozzie hadn’t said anything.

Neal looked at him, confused. “Kelly Knight was in your original group?”

Mozzie looked taken aback and glanced between him and the girl in the picture he was pointing at.

“Kelly Knight? The woman who found Mopey’s body?” he asked, and Neal nodded. Mozzie’s features darkened as he pointed at the face in the photograph. “Neal, that’s Betty.”

Of all the things he could have said, that ranked up there with the time they were escaping a diamond heist in Greece and he said 'let’s blow this joint’ without hyperbolizing. Mozzie’s fire bug required a cage with steel bars.

His eyes widened. If his ex, an original Wonder Wheeler with connections to everyone involved in the murders, was operating under an alias and happened to be the one who found the first victim’s body… Smiley had known that Mozzie had the closest tie to Betty from their former group. He wasn't trying to blame him for his murder. He was trying to warn him.

Somewhere in the tent, there was a fan with shit on it.

But a far more pressing issue with identifiable coordinates was the woman entering the main area of the tent. Kelly Knight - no, Betty - was strong-arming Dr. Groves in her candy apple pajamas into the space with a gun to her temple.

“It hardly counts as solving the case if the case solves itself five seconds later,” Mozzie griped beside him as they peeked around the tiger cage.

He would take that up with the universe later. For now, his faculties were occupied with surviving the situation, whatever it turned into. Betty shoved a compliant Groves directly towards them. She might have looked more terrified if there wasn’t such a look of bewilderment on her fresh-from-sleep features.

Neal and Mozzie ducked fully behind the cage, eyes sliding towards each other in the dark as Neal snuffed out the glow of his phone by pressing it against his chest and turning it off quickly.

‘She looks great,’ Mozzie mouthed silently.

Neal frowned. Now was not the time to appreciate the kind passage of time.

Betty forced her into the tiger cage, and the metal gave a clank as she secured the bars in place and put the padlock on. More alarming than Betty waking up the others by clanging the gun against the metal frame of the trampoline and forcing them into another cage one by one was the acrid smell of accelerant. Neal nudged Mozzie and waved his hand in front of his nose to indicate the smell. Mozzie, in turn, pointed at himself questioningly like he thought Neal was accusing him of stinking and decided to point out his body odor while Betty was forcing everyone else into the other tiger cages. He made a face at him, so Mozzie focused his nose and mouthed _gasoline?_ with widened eyes. Neal nodded.

Things were shaping up nicely from bad to worse.

“Come on out, Mozzie! I know you’re in here. Saw you come in. Been watching the tent all night.” The sugary sound of Kelly Knight’s voice was replaced with a cold, hardened clip without the sweet facade to put on.

“Let’s bolt,” Mozzie whispered.

“And leave everyone to die?”

“We’ll get them a nice memorial. Something tasteful. Names engraved in gold.”

Setting aside the alleged tastefulness of that, he wasn't sure that would come as a great comfort to all of their friends and family.

“Come out, come out, or I’ll start shooting fish in a barrel.” Or clowns in a cage, which was more off-putting but just as deadly. “Three, two—”

Neal stood, revealing himself from the shoulders up behind the cage and held his arms up, hands out, to Mozzie’s head-hanging resignation. The gun swung in his direction. Having one aimed at him never lost its novelty. It was just as horrible each time he found himself facing off against a criminal with a homicidal streak. Mozzie stood up too, slower and with more reluctance.

“Hello, Betty. Long time, no see,” he greeted, not bothering to put his hands up. “Considering your new hobby of killing old friends, perhaps we could arrange to make the next long time longer.”

She smiled, and while it was joyous, there was a wickedness to it that made Neal feel genuinely disconnected from her, same species or not. He tried and failed to imagine the gun-wielding madwoman going to wine tastings and art exhibits with Mozzie, paying for a horse-drawn carriage to take them home because Mozzie stepped on an actual bed of nails while trying to steal from a fence that booby-trapped his house like he was Kevin McCallister. Those were Neal’s weekends and weekdays and, occasionally, his emergency post-brunch close calls having to save Mozzie from a pissed off bookie that got paid off with marked bills. It was hard imagining him spending the bulk of his time with anyone else, least of all a woman with a cold smile and a gun to their chests.

“There’s not going to be a next time, Mozzie. It’s nice to see you again, but this is a last hurrah kind of deal.” She jerked her gun to indicate they come out. Neal did to save the fish in the barrel. Mozzie did, because Neal did.

Clarence was on his knees, crowded in the middle cage with the others, and clutched the bars to peer out. She was his ex, too. “Hey, Betts, what’s goin’ on?”

“I, too, would appreciate an explanation to your sudden transformation into a clown killing machine,” Mozzie said.

She could have just stopped coming to the reunions. Knocking them off from, understandable, embarrassment at her past was literally overkill. She couldn't have been too shamed by the clowning, considering she joined up with the local circus as recently as a couple of weeks ago.

“It’s not about the killing,” she replied once she had them both in front of the last empty tiger cage and jerked the gun again for them to get inside. “It’s about the money.”

Neal got in first so Mozzie would follow and wouldn’t linger and get himself shot. They could both retire from being shot since the initiation into the survivors club might not have lasting membership if they kept taking new hits. There wasn’t enough room to stand without cowering, so they knelt next to each other. The metallic sound of the lock clicking into place didn’t do great things for his sense of survival.

Betty collected phones from every cage and pointed the gun at anyone who hesitated to turn them over.

Mozzie shook his head. “So you’re a clown killing hitwoman machine?”

Neal doubted anybody cared about the oddballs that made up Groves’ clients enough to pay to have them killed.

“I remember you being smarter,” Betty said, which was pretty unfair. Insults on top of gun-wielding and caging fell under the umbrella of kicking someone while they were down.

“I remember you being less scary,” Mozzie countered, hands fisted around the bars. “Actually, no. I think I feared you most when I drank your 1978 Montrachet.”

Ah. So they bonded over a mutual overinvestment in liver destruction.

Clarence decided to pipe up with an unhelpful, “Never had to worry about that with me. I’m a teetotaler.”

Mozzie actually balked like his wine-loving spirit attempted to bolt from his body to escape the offense of Clarence’s company. “What did you ever see in him?!”

Betty stepped forward, and Neal reflexively moved back from the bars. Mozzie didn’t, and a second later she had a pair of cuffs slapped around his left wrist, chaining him to one of the bars.

“Hey!” he and Mozzie protested together. Wasn’t the cage enough of a trap?

She wasn’t looking for extra security, though. Cuffing Mozzie meant he couldn’t pull away when she jabbed a needle in his arm and drew blood. He shoved his bewilderment aside so his mind could occupy itself with ideas on how to get them out of this.

“Ow! That better have been a clean needle. At least murder me hygienically.”

Neal had a preference for no murder of any kind himself.

Betty smiled that unhinged grin that didn’t seem compatible with Mozzie’s mad-with-conspiratorial-glee ones and pocketed the vial of blood. “I thought they would pin the whole thing on Groves, but I got wind through my circus contacts that the Feds were zeroing in on you, Moz. I figure dropping your DNA at the last victim’s house should give them enough to declare you the big bad guy. You remember the Waldens from group?” Neal knew that name. They were a Wonder Wheelers couple that had stopped coming to the reunions. “Yeah, they’re dead. Stabbed ‘em in their sleep. I appreciate you taking the fall for me.”

Neal slunk into the shadows at the back of the cage and, with a stealth pluck of his hand, removed the lockpicking set from his shoe that came in handy with Groves’ filing cabinet earlier. There was a slender tool with a sharp edge at the end, and he got to work sawing at his anklet. If it went from green to red, the FBI would send an army to his last known location. Peter would come.

Mozzie’s cuff rattled against the bar in his frustration. “To what end?! Were you always this sociopathic or did years with Clarence turn you to the dark side?”

He never did get the memo on not antagonizing the people with guns.

“You remember Lester Byrd?”

“Of course. He’s the only Wonder Wheeler who isn’t bonkers. Well, he is, but in a way that’s complimentary to my own mental status.”

A status that was officially undetermined by the state or Neal’s own estimation.

Mozzie tipped his chin in the air. “We exchange holiday postcards and occasionally reminisce about how unfun the rest of you were.”

“Yeah.” Betty grinned. “He’s dead.”

A bolt of sympathy struck Neal as Mozzie flinched. Mozzie only trusted him, but there were people here and there that he was fond of. Not many. Getting a Mozzie stamp of approval was a hard process with few applicants and fewer acceptances.

“You killed Lester?”

“No. He was sick. Cancer got him. Spread fast. Did you know he was rich? The kind of rich that spoils a person into believing that the old friend that popped up to watch him die was a sign of support and not exploitation. I just wanted a peek at the will. And peek, I did. He left a happy lump of money to be spread evenly to the Wonder Wheelers. I thought that was very generous of him. It inspired me to show that same generosity to myself. By getting rid of the rest of you and taking the whole portion for myself.”

How philanthropic.

From the stricken look on his face, Mozzie hadn't even known he was sick, let alone that there was money being willed his way from his late friend.

“His lawyer will be contacting you all next week when his affairs are in order. Or he would. If any of you were still alive, which you won’t be. Spoiler alert. I will be attacked at my home but will survive. Your DNA,” she pat her pocket, “will be at the scene. But I’m a survivor. And besides, you came here afterwards anyway. Went nuts and decided to kill some old friends. Finished everyone else off, and locked yourself up after starting a fire. Only a crazy person would do that, and they’ve met you so they’ll believe it.”

Neal sat forward, just enough to get a better angle and hide what he was doing. “Says the actual crazy person.”

Betty shrugged. “Two million dollars could drive anyone crazy.”

“Chump change!” Mozzie shouted defiantly, but Betty was moving away. She came back into view with a can of gasoline and started pouring it out generously throughout the perimeter of the tent.

That incited a roar of panic from the others. They banged on the bars and hollered for help and screamed after Betty as she hummed an old Britney Spears tune and went around increasing the flammability of the already flammable tent, drawing the can back and splashing big waves of gas over the walls here and there. Clarence launched an ignored bargain to let her have his share of the money, and offered to get back together when that didn’t work. Desperate times. Strongwoman Jade shoved him into the bars.

The noise gave Neal the cover he needed to slink back to the shadows and saw at his anklet in earnest. He readjusted the angle and pressure, sawed, sawed, sawed—

“Moz.”

Mozzie looked back, lips curling with surprised pleasure, where Neal cut off his newly red - the first time it was the color of salvation - ankle monitor and slid it across the cage floor to the corner. Help was on the way. They had to try not to die until then.

She came back over, pried Mozzie’s fingers from the bar and pressed his hand around the handle of the gun after popping the bullets out. He tried yanking it in with him, but she popped him in the head with the ivory handle of a knife at her hip. He shot back, getting caught on the cuff and jerking to a stop, and Neal crawled over to him, cringing with sympathy and jaw tightening with anger as he reached up and inspected the area. It wasn’t bleeding, but he would probably get a sizable bump from a hit that hard.

“You’re okay,” he told him instead of asking, because they didn’t have time to doubt that now. They had to get out of there.

His hand itched with the thin, silver lockpicking tool in his palm, but he couldn’t start trying to open the lock while Betty was looking. She would just shoot them if she thought they were getting away.

Mozzie tried, unconvincingly, to lighten the load of impending doom. “We’ve been in more dire straits.”

“Have we?”

“Marseille, 2003.”

“Gasoline trumps guillotine, Moz.” Marginally. They kept their heads after all.

“Karaginskiy Island, 2004.” Even the memory made Mozzie shudder.

“I don’t know. At least we could outrun bears.” Though, he and Kate had to wash out Mozzie’s eyes in a creek after he fled and released a stream of pepper spray at the same time, only managing to get it in his own eyes.

“At least death by fire has a noble sound to it. Getting mauled by a Kamchatka brown bear will just get you a segment on Animal Planet.”

Now there was a bright side Neal never thought he would be weighing.

With the tent doused, Betty walked over and tossed the gun down from a gloved hand in front of their cage for the police to find in the cinders. Her eyes were off, bright with excitement, as she began walking backwards with a lighter in her hand. She wasn’t just in it for the greed. She liked this, the power it afforded her, the ability to take someone’s life in her own hands and decide when it ended.

The people in the other cages screamed and begged and banged on the bars, but Neal only watched and waited for his moment.

“Well,” Mozzie murmured, and Neal tilted his ear in his direction, “fire is a fitting end to someone with my pyrotechnic affections. I’ll have something nice to look at while I go up like a chestnut. Shame for you, though. Maybe you could look at me while you roast and imagine I’m one of your four-inch waisted Fashion Week starlets.”

With the striking likeness between them, shouldn’t be too hard.

“Thanks, Moz,” he replied dryly, eyes never leaving Betty.

There wasn’t going to be any roasting.

Betty stopped at the entrance to the main room, raised the lighter and flicked it on, a tiny orange and blue flame bursting at the tip.

“To Lester,” she toasted and tossed it to the nearest gasoline soaked canvas wall.

The effect was immediate. Flames shot up the side and spread in a race of bright red and flickering white over the surface, chasing up and out wide, rising up in a mountainous, raging wall of fire on the ground. The whole tent would be engulfed in minutes. The last Neal saw of Betty was the cruel edge of a satisfied smile as she turned and disappeared down the hall to leave them to their fate.

“Think we can con our way past Saint Peter?” Mozzie asked, but his voice was tight under the panicked wailing coming from the other cages.

“I’m not in the mood to find out,” Neal replied and shot to the left side of the cage, leaning far out and groping for the padlock barring them in.

He closed his eyes as he got the tools in place and concentrated on feeling the pins, trying to zone out the stench of gas, the heat of the spreading flames, and the roar of the fire. He never stopped to consider the sound of a fire, the hissing rise and crackle as it ate through plastic and polyester, but it was a sound he wouldn’t soon forget. He took shallow, even breaths and pushed the sobbing panic into a quiet corner of his mind, only listening to Mozzie’s murmured _time is of the essence_ and _I hope the Suit brings a very large bucket of water_.

The lock gave and opened. A grin whipped over his face, and he made quick work of pulling it free from the metal loops securing the door. He pushed it open and hopped down. Ground never felt so good under his feet. Mozzie was after him and stayed standing beside it, wrist dangling at his waist where it was stuck to the cuff.

Neal pressed the thin lockpick into his free hand, a brief gaze of relief and just a hint of exhilaration flashing between them (the same kind of thrill that guided them on dozens of heists into locked safes and behind pillars while guards passed by on patrol, dampened a bit by the unfortunate murder thrown in this time around) before he darted off for the other cages with two more tools from his kit.

He glanced over his shoulder as he reached the first one, but Betty wasn’t coming back. Not with the tent in the oven. The others rushed forward, plead with him to help and be quick, clutching at the bars and speed talking over each other as they urged him on.

He almost had it when the fire hit a puddle of accelerant that ignited like a Molotov cocktail, popping and flashing bright as a huge new roar of fire blew up and ran across the remainder of the tent’s perimeter. Neal cowered, arms overhead, and ducked on instinct. Mozzie was closer. He was blown forward from the blast of it, slammed his chest against the bars he was trying to escape, and hit the ground on his knees. The lockpick flew out of his hand and out of reach far across the tent floor.

“Moz!”

He almost ran back, but Mozzie waved him off as he got back to his feet. “Help them. There’s no conning Saint Peter if an entire dysfunctional circus troupe dies because of me.”

Neal hesitated, but the desperate cries of the group in front of him wrangled his focus back to the task at hand, even if his heart was pounding a lot harder than it had been seconds before. He got the tools in place and squeezed his eyes shut, zeroing in on what he had to do and doing it quickly.

The shift of the pins clicking was the best feeling in the world. He ripped the lock off and yanked the door open. The group nearly bulldozed him in their rush to spill out and run, arms flying up to shield their noses from the thickening smoke. He turned back for Mozzie, but again, he pointed across the tent.

“Go!”

Neal looked to Groves stuck in a cage farther away and frowned, feeling torn. Instinct told him to get back to Mozzie. That was what they did when the other was in trouble. They ran back if the other tripped and had security on their tail. It went against nature that built itself into a stronghold in his system over years upon years of having each other’s backs, but he ran for Groves anyway.

Unlock it and go back. He unlocked hundreds of locks in practice and by necessity. That was all he had to do. Unlock it and go back.

Groves wasn’t screaming like the others, but she did scoot forward in her pajamas and watch him pick at the lock.

“Thank you,” she said, so quietly under the raging destruction of the tent that he almost didn’t catch it.

The lock gave, and he helped her out. “Run.”

She hesitated, looking over towards where Mozzie was trapped even as Neal was already turning, but he repeated himself and she listened, tearing off through the smoke and down the hallway that would be ashes by morning.

“You know,” Mozzie said as he reached him and pulled on the handcuff to get a better look, “if you were ever going to turn out to be secretly evil, now would be a great time for your grand reveal. Just leave me here to burn and walk out with a swish.”

Neal smiled, focused as he got the tool in place. “I do not swish when I walk.”

“Unless your hips are leading a revolt against your control, I beg to differ. The swish works for you, though. Continue swishing.”

His smile softened—stretched at the corners. “Almost got it.”

And in cosmic fashion, clearly designed by a wicked deity, he instantly jinxed it.

The last blast seemed small compared to the one that hit now. This one was closer. The combustion lifted him off his feet and threw him several feet back, slamming him into the ground. Mozzie hit the ground on his knees, arm wrenching hard as he nearly had his shoulder pulled out of its socket as his body was thrown but trapped in place by the handcuff.

Neal got to his hands and knees, eyes growing wide with horror at the emptiness of his hands. He lost the tools in the explosion. The fire was licking up all of the surrounding walls now, making a quick crawl up to the tent’s vaulted roof. The whole thing was going to crumble in on itself. They had minutes if they were lucky. Luck hadn’t shown its face yet tonight.

“Neal.” Mozzie coughed from the ground as Neal searched for the lockpick. The smoke was clouding over the areas that weren’t already in flames. He tried to breathe into his elbow. The fire was less than twenty feet away from devouring the cages, and the firelight cast awful shadows over the fear and wince of pained resignation on his face. “Get out of here.”

“No.”

“Neal—”

“ _No!_ ”

His heart hammered, reaching a crescendo of fraught drumming that made his chest ache with every pump against his sore ribcage. He spun around, looking for something else to use but the pick Mozzie originally lost was somewhere in the fire. Neal’s were impossible to find through the darkness and the smoke.

Mozzie stuck to the ground to breathe easier. Neal kept looking, kept scanning. He just needed to think.

Going to the cage, he grabbed the barred door and gave it a shake. The cage didn’t so much as rattle. It was much too heavy to move on their own. He shook the door again, hard, tried to see if he could loosen the hinges or break it free of the cage. Not even a hopeful clink of one loose bolt.

A piece of the rafters broke off and fell through the air overhead, smashing into the ground close enough to make them both flinch.

“Neal!” he implored. He looked down at him through the bars, but the usual spark of adrenaline wasn’t there. He was just scared. And infuriatingly pragmatic. “I’m stuck. Get out of here. …Come back when help arrives.”

He looked at him, face darkening at the implication. They both knew if he left now, Mozzie would die. From the fire or asphyxiation. He wouldn’t make it the five or ten or twenty minutes it would take fire trucks to get there and make any kind of dent in the flames.

Fire was running down the hallway towards the only exit, fanning up and down. Soon enough, it wouldn’t be an exit at all. The way would be blocked. The window on getting out was starting to shut.

Neal turned back, met Mozzie’s eyes. There was plenty of understandable terror there, but there was forgiveness too. He was forgiving Neal for leaving him behind.

Rather than making it easier to leave, Neal felt a terrible shift in his chest, around his heart—inside it. Memories of blown up planes and grief broke through the smoke and burned hotter than the fire closing in on him. It was a vow crafted from fragments of loss that plead not to be repeated. If Mozzie died, life wouldn’t restart on Monday with a new case and a fresh con. Some losses were formative. Others were deconstruction.

Mozzie was wine at 4 a.m. after no sleep and chocolate stains on museum blueprints. He was insane ideas inside plausible excuses that made him wonder _what if_ even as he smiled and shook his head. He was a hand on his shoulder when the world felt small and the press of a shoulder against his when _he_ was too small. Neal had friends and pursuits, family and girlfriends, and he had Mozzie—a category all his own. A partner, a best friend. A paranoid, arguably delusional, loyal criminal named after a teddy bear named after a musician. And he would never leave Neal behind in a fire.

That was the pact he stumbled into when he was eighteen, alone, learning, and Mozzie befriended him. His relationships flamed out, quietly forgotten or neatly put away, always moving on and exploring and creating. But Mozzie was the constant in the chaos. Bears, guillotines, and fire—Neal could be the chaos in the chaos if he had to be.

Abandoning the bars, he charged through the wall of smoke deeper into the tent, taking in a lungful and coughing against it. Mozzie called after him, but he had an idea now.

The trampolines weren’t on fire yet. Neal made it to the outer ring of the nearest one and squinted down at the frame. A flash of a grin, and he got to work removing a piece of it. More dropping splinters of debris from above were motivation enough to get the small part free at a decent pace.

He got back to Mozzie who was back on his feet where he was trying to make out what he was doing through the cloudiness. He grabbed the cuffs and did the only thing he could do, try.

Mozzie took one look at the piece he retrieved and the flare of optimism he had deflated under sagged shoulders and exasperation. Admittedly, one of the coiled springs that stretched and held the trampoline in place wasn’t the ideal lockpick, but it was better than nothing. There was a pointy edge on one end that he tried to warp farther out so he could use it in the cuffs.

“Look, I appreciate your valiant effort, but it’s too thick and your white horse is stuck in the stables. You have to go.”

The dry warning sparked into wide-eyed urgency as the fire along the back of the tent ran up a line of gasoline and licked up under the cage, setting the back of it on fire. Mozzie stopped asking and started forcibly shoving Neal away from him and towards the escape route. The spring jerked out of the cuff keyhole.

“Moz, stop!”

“Get out of here, Neal! Go!”

It was pointless. Neal wasn’t going to be able to use an oversized, poorly fit MacGyver scrap of metal to free him. Not if he was being jostled and pushed away the more desperate Mozzie became for him to get out before it was too late.

Neal flipped around. The fire sizzled over the top of the cage and even leaning away from it didn’t protect from the scorching heat of it against his skin.

He darted away through the smoke again, weaving past a block of crackling fire to the unicycle stand out of the way. He snatched the bike lock off the handle bars of Clarence’s bright blue unicycle that he brought in himself and ran back. Before Mozzie could puzzle out what he was doing, he tied it around the bar where Mozzie was trapped and twisted it around to trap his own wrist tightly enough to cut off circulation before locking it in place.

Mozzie caught up after the fact and boggled at what Neal had done. “What are you doing?!”

“Now we’re both stuck. Be still,” he ordered. “I’m not leaving you behind.”

Mozzie could only gape at him in response, but he was stock-still and compliant. That was all Neal needed. He got the spring in the cuff with limited motion from his trapped hand and closed his eyes. The fire burning closer and closer was harder to ignore than the noise of people. It was a threat that made him break out in a sweat from the heat and the proximity that meant they were on a countdown.

When he glanced up, Mozzie’s eyes were squeezed shut. Whatever happened next, he didn’t want to see it coming. He wasn’t sure the surprise would make it any easier.

The spring was too big. It was the wrong shape. It wouldn’t work. There was no reason it should. The lock wasn’t going to give. Mozzie was going to die there.

And in cosmic fashion, clearly designed by a merciful deity, he instantly jinxed it.

The handcuffs snapped open.

Mozzie’s eyes popped open at the feel of the silver falling away from his wrist. He made a noise between celebration and absolute, incoherent shock. Despite the smoke corroding his lungs, Neal could breathe again.

One crisis down. One to go.

“How are we going to cut this thing off?” Neal asked, narrowing his eyes on the bike lock trapping him. They could maybe cut through it. If they could shred off some of the plastic casing, it might provide enough give for him to get his wrist free. “Try to find something sharp, or use the spring.”

Mozzie was already twisting the numbered lock face up to see the different slots.

“No need. I was planning on stealing the unicycle from Clarence and disassembling it, leaving its body parts for him to find out of spite. I’ve got the code.”

Neal’s eyes went wide as Mozzie twisted the first two numbers into place, a smile brightening his face. Thank God for Mozzie’s kleptomania.

The bike lock unlocked and Mozzie unwrapped it from the bar until Neal could get his wrist loose. He reached out, shaking the hand that was already falling asleep from the lack of blood flow, and wrapped numb fingers around Mozzie’s forearm.

“Come on!”

They ran for the hall, stopping in their tracks and pulling back when a huge part of the rafters collapsed and dropped like a flaming log in front of them. Neal didn’t miss the way Mozzie instinctively curled towards him, arm going up to block him from the small crumbling scraps of wood that rained down after.

Bears, guillotines, and rain of fire. That was what he and Mozzie were.

They scrambled around the debris, ran through the maze of fire that the tent had become, and made it to the entrance of the hall. The pile of confiscated phones was there. Most were in the beginning stages of melting from the heat of the fire about to eat them, but Mozzie's was an outlier. He snatched it. Both of them hesitated. The hall was ablaze on both walls all the way down. They would have to run through that and hope that it didn’t spread across the floor and bridge the gap between both sides while they were still moving through it.

“If I die, you can have my record collection,” Mozzie said.

Neal nodded. “If I die, you can have my wine.”

“Oh.” Mozzie cheered up. “That would certainly aid in the grieving process.”

Neal pulled a wary gaze away from him to focus on the task ahead. They braced themselves and ran. It felt exactly like running through a tunnel of fire should have felt, which was to say that Neal very much did not want to repeat the experience. Heat, sweat, and the itch of warning making his spine stiff lit a figurative fire under their steps to help them escape the literal one.

Bursting out of the tent into the cold night air, free of the heat and smoke inside, shot up there on his list of best feelings ever. Even beat nailing the landing whenever he BASE jumped on a job. At least hitting concrete would have been instant. Burning alive was the stuff of nightmares; nightmares he was pretty sure would plague him for the next few weeks.

They didn’t stop hobbling and coughing until they were a safe distance away. Sirens and whirring ambulances were speeding in their direction.

“Typical suits.” Mozzie doubled over, bracing his hands on his knees and wheezing. “Arrive too late to help but right on time to take credit. I’m getting out of here before they decide to pin this barbeque on me.”

He made it all of two steps before doubling right back over and coughing up a lung. Neal rubbed his back sympathetically.

“Think you need an oxygen mask, buddy,” he told him. His own chest felt like it was on fire, and his throat burned, mouth dry. He wanted oxygen and a shower and two gallons of water.

Mozzie stood back up in defeat, patting his chest like he was trying to put out the fire spreading there. “Fine, but if the homicide suits show up, I’ll give them their own inhalation problems by lighting a smoke bomb and disappearing.”

Fair enough.

Several black Fed cars pulled up just in front of a string of cop cars and two ambulances. Peter climbed out of one of them.

Neal glanced down at his bare ankle.

Mozzie noticed and leaned in to mutter, “We could have used this to fake our deaths and run.”

“Not really in the mood to fake my death. Not so soon after a very near _death_ death.”

“Neal!” Peter exclaimed when he reached them, shaking his head, arms out in disbelief at the crumbling figure of the melting tent. Fire trucks were sidling up in front of it, and firemen were swarming out like ants and running into position. “Decide to liven up your slumber party?”

“Well, we couldn’t braid each other’s hair.” Neal gestured to Mozzie’s baldness.

“The mani-pedis were fun, though,” Mozzie replied and made a beeline for the ambulance that pulled to a stop, clutching his throat and shouldering his way past Clarence who was complaining that he may have stubbed his toe on the way out of the tent.

Peter raised an eyebrow at the bodycheck.

“We hate him,” Neal explained. Apparently, it was a grudge that surpassed the logic of Mozzie and Betty’s relationship being doomed by her homicidal mania anyway.

“Ah.”

Peter collared his ankle with a new monitor right there on the spot and didn’t take Neal’s comment about the hurtful nature of him prioritizing his captivity over his health with much more than a roll of the eyes before sending him off to the ambulance where Mozzie was already sitting on the back with an oxygen mask on.

He hopped up next to him, and a helpful paramedic got him his own mask. It wasn’t an instant cure, but it did feel good to breathe air clear of ash. They watched the tent burn down despite the hose spray and valiant effort of the firemen. It was almost pretty from the outside, burning bright against the black sky. Mozzie definitely thought so, fire bug alive and kicking; his eyes were bright as he stared up, transfixed by the sight.

He felt a stab of sympathy for Groves before he noticed her chatting with Jade and the other women off to the side where Peter was getting a statement from Clarence. The stab softened to a paper cut at her toothy smile as she excitedly relayed fire damage was covered by her insurance and how the influx of money would help her buy new equipment for her clients. Looked like evil Betty might have a thank you card coming in the mail. If they ever caught her.

Diana was explaining to a confused Groves that she was undercover and not actually with Peter, nor was she planning to return for counseling when she rebuilt her practice. Neal figured it was their turn to come clean when Groves came over to check on them but felt a strange resistance to being made.

“It was very brave of you to risk your life for your partner, Neal,” Groves commended him and turned to Mozzie. “A much better match for you than Betty in my professional opinion.”

A healthier one, at least. Pyromania probably wasn’t the best foundation for a relationship.

“Actually,” Mozzie started to come clean, “Neal and I aren’t—”

“—really feeling up to talking. All that smoke,” Neal interrupted him, wrapping his arm around his shoulders to help maintain the illusion of coupledom.

She wished them well, hugged Mozzie, and wandered back over to her clients. Mozzie lifted a questioning eyebrow at him.

Neal shrugged. “Never hurts to maintain an alias.”

That was something he couldn’t argue with, and they sat together, breathing beautiful clean air with Neal’s arm around his shoulders until Mozzie’s phone buzzed with a message from Gordon Taylor. It was another mysterious picture of glass.

Neal watched Mozzie while he puzzled over the image and felt a rush of inexplicable fondness. There was soot on his cheeks, and his wrist was red where it took a beating from the cuffs. He touched the sore area, but Mozzie declared it fine, an assessment he might change later on after he stopped being so distracted by the smoke inhalation.

He shook his phone and sounded like a bad, garbled Darth Vader impersonation under the mask when he asked, “You still okay with me going?”

Truth be told, after the night they had, Neal wasn’t feeling up to pulling any kind of job, even one of a likely high-class, top-tier persuasion. He would gladly trade any con for a good week in a comfortably induced coma. If Mozzie wanted to go, he wasn’t going to hold him back.

Neal pulled the oxygen mask away from his face long enough to tease, “What’s a week on separate continents to us? I walked through fire for you.”

Mozzie pointed at him with a correcting lilt to his voice, “Walked through fire _with_ me.”

They sat next to each other on the back of the ambulance, breathing fresh air while watching the tent that almost killed them slowly die itself, and Neal had the sensibility to understand in that moment how that was the entire point.


	5. Chapter 5

The ride to the airport was quiet. They had an early breakfast at Neal's apartment where Mozzie gave him the going away present that was originally intended for when he went on the run. It was the scroll from inside the stolen porcelain elephant's trunk. He cracked it, and realizing what it was, had forfeited it over to Neal, knowing he would have a greater appreciation for its contents. It wasn't a treasure map or clue to a secret spy ring. It was just a love note from one person long gone to another, an Emily Brontë quote that read simply: _'Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.'_ Mozzie had rolled his eyes. Neal had kept it in his pocket.

Mozzie wasn’t checking any luggage and only had a small carry-on satchel with his fake passport and cash inside. He got up to leave to catch his flight to Italy after they finished eating, but before he reached the door, Neal had grabbed his jacket and decided to walk down with him to wait for the cab. Then climbed into the taxi after him after a quick glance of indecision down the street.

Mozzie turned to him, puzzled.

Neal shrugged. “Betty is still on the loose. She might not be able to get the money from Lester now, but she could still come after you for revenge. As long as your back is in New York, it couldn’t hurt to have someone watch it.”

He asked the driver to take them to the airport and looked out the window, trying to ignore the undefinable heaviness in the pit of his stomach, building stronger the closer they got to the airport. Mozzie took his surprise ride-along as an invitation to pay for the cab fare and left the car as soon as they pulled up.

Neal leaned forward and paid in exasperation.

His anklet was still green, but an alert clearly went out to Peter because they hadn’t found his gate yet after buying an extra ticket (under a false name) to wait with him when his phone went off.

“Suit?” Mozzie guessed.

Neal flashed the caller ID at him. Mozzie nodded knowingly and walked ahead as Neal slowed down to answer.

_“You’re at an airport,”_ was the first thing out of Peter’s mouth.

Neal smiled sarcastically at Mozzie’s back up ahead. “I felt like sunning, and Cancún has more beach appeal than Queens.”

_“Neal.”_

He would draw it out more but didn’t feel like dealing with the swarm of Federal agents that would flood in if he didn’t assuage worries quickly. “I’m just saying bye to Moz.”

_“He’s traveling again? Should I be keeping an eye on international art theft this week?”_

“Assuming the worst in people is a terrible quality.” Then, to give him some cover in case Peter decided to follow through and bring Mozzie in for questioning after Taylor’s heist made the news, he added, “He thought it was best to lay low for a while with his ex after him.”

_“About that,”_ Peter started, and Neal stopped walking, brow furrowing in concentration as Peter passed on the news of Betty’s resisting arrest charge that was added to all the murder ones when she was found late last night.

It included a leotard, tight rope, and sparklers, strangely. A huge weight was lifted off his shoulders. Diana was even the one to take her down, which added to his grin. Peter said he thought he heard her grit _you almost killed the little guy_ in her ear while she cuffed her, but she denied it when asked.

Neal turned at the sound of an excited squeal. A woman in shorts and a tank top that suggested she came from somewhere much warmer hopped up as she reached her boyfriend, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him hello. Her bag dropped in the excitement, and Neal smiled, but it was wane and too stubborn to reach his eyes as his gaze returned to Mozzie who found his waiting area farther into the airport and sunk into a chair.

Peter’s voice plucked him out of the morose mood trying to bring him down. _“You’re not going to start moping until Mozzie comes back again, are you?”_

The conversation had reached its natural conclusion.

“Goodbye, Peter.”

He hung up, taking a moment to appreciate the relief of having their would-be killer behind bars, before tucking it away in his suit jacket and walking over to Mozzie, smiling back at a couple of women who stopped digging around their purses for their tickets long enough to give him friendly once-overs. With more time and a better spirit, he might have offered to buy them drinks at the airport bar while they waited for their flight. But his interest didn’t have the stamina to incite more than a passing smile as he walked over to Moz.

He took a seat in the chair next to him and relayed Peter’s message.

There was already a crowd gathered there, filling other rows of seats: talking, reading, or messing with their phones. They had the space to talk freely without being overheard, so Mozzie’s silence when he reached the part with the sparklers was a point of concern. He wasn’t as exuberant as he usually was when he got to cross a name off of his enemies list. Not even being officially cleared of suspicion or hearing that Peter had erased all traces of Mozzie from his reports and the FBI database to avoid another mishap like this was working up a decent _ha!_ or lecture about the general evil of government hacks with trigger fingers on framing innocent people.

At Neal’s inquiring look, he gave a somber explanation with a small shrug. “She wasn’t just a psychopath who took our shared interest in arson to unfortunate places. I used to care about her. This whole thing has reminded me that trust is a resource more valuable than oil and, apparently, far more flammable. Justice for Lester. That’s what counts.”

Neal’s smile felt like a frown. He pat his leg, knowing what it was like to lose faith in people. That kind of thing left a lasting mark. It also made him appreciate the people he could have faith in with a tighter grip. It was a short list and required armor.

He checked his watch. Wouldn’t be long before Mozzie was in the sky, sailing for a job in a place Neal loved but couldn’t see for another couple of years at least. It was jealousy for the adventure and the scenery that was making the tick of the second hand bring a haze over his mood. That was all. Jealousy was weak. Neal prided himself on not indulging it, so he pushed it away and attempted to lighten the mood.

“I should start doing background checks on your other exes to avoid a repeat of this disaster.”

That got a smile. “Maybe I’ll start looking for that fabled ‘One’ you were talking about. Narrow your job.”

“I don’t think you find The One, Moz. I think you accept it when you see it.”

Mozzie turned thoughtful. “Accept the things I cannot change.”

He wondered if that was the kind of thing you tried to change. Their eyes met, and the sun must have been higher beyond the glass wall because Neal felt warmed.

“A soulmate seems pretty unchangeable,” he agreed.

A kid ran between their row and the one facing them with a toy airplane that he was flying through the air with sound effects before dropping at the feet of his mother and crashing it into her lap while she nodded to no one and continued talking on the phone. Neal didn’t see himself with kids, but it tugged on the tie he knotted tight for family, held on to, protected. He didn’t have much. He held on to what held on to him.

Mozzie crossed his legs and acquiesced, “Fine. I’ll use the Serenity prayer as a guide for romance, but don’t go thinking I’ll seek courage for its oft-applied inspiration for sobriety.”

Trying to imagine Mozzie holding hands with a bunch of anonymous people and praying to keep the wine away made his head hurt.

“Trust me.” He pat his shoulder. “I already have the wisdom to know the difference between love and sobriety with you.”

“One is a passable time of whimsy, and the other is worse than bamboo under fingernails?” The scary thing was, Neal wasn’t sure if that was hyperbolizing from Mozzie’s perspective.

He shook his head at his lap and offered a bet, “I’ll give you a thousand dollars not to drink wine for a week.”

Not even Mozzie liked to gamble when the odds against him were so steep. “I’d rather _spend_ a thousand dollars on a bottle of Chateau Saint Pierre.”

Neal suppressed a laugh and made a note to get a bottle for Mozzie’s return, whenever that ended up being. The weekend turned into an estimated week or two. He knew that jobs sometimes had a way of rolling into other jobs and opportunities. Even with no suitcase or plans, it might end up being a while before he saw him again.

He would be busy with the FBI, and Mozzie would be busy with Taylor and enjoying the finer things in Europe. They would both have stories when he got back.

Neal was staring out the window at the sky and wondering if Peter was going to show up to make sure he didn’t follow Mozzie onto the plane when Mozzie brought up the fire, or being trapped inside of it, for the first time since that night.

“You could have died doing what you did.”

The clouds drifted slowly across a screen of light blue, and the day didn’t let the, admitted, stupidity and recklessness of chaining himself next to Mozzie feel any less necessary. The sky would still have been blue, clouds would drift, breeze would cut cool lines through the trees, but that wouldn’t have been how Neal saw it if he ran out of the tent with the others. The world would go black and cold, unlivable conditions under blue skies hidden behind tinted glass.

Neal knew grief. He would never choose that when there was a chance. There was always another way. He couldn’t have left that tent any more than he could have stopped looking for Kate when she was missing. Some choices only looked that way but stopped being choices the second one direction led to an impossible place. A place, a life, a forevermore without Mozzie wasn’t somewhere Neal could go. It wasn’t a choice.

“You would have died if I didn’t.”

Mozzie turning towards him pulled his gaze to him. “Guess that makes you my hero. I’ll steal something appropriate in commemoration. Christopher Reeve's original Superman cape or the sword in the stone, so you can show off when you’re able to pull it out.”

Rewards were fun. Not burying his best friend was a fairly good one.

“I’m not a hero, Moz.” He glanced at the kid with the airplane toy as his mother leaned over and kissed her husband when he sat down in the chair beside her. His lips quirked in a half-smile as he answered truthfully, “I’m just family.”

Mozzie didn’t have much of that either. Neal and Mr. Jeffries were pretty much it. That was the kind of tight circle that growing up in an orphanage and trusting no one inspired.

They smiled and looked away just as the announcement to start boarding was made.

Neal checked that he had his burner phone and passport, under the name of Gus Bane. He reminded him that Peter could be bored enough to check the manifests for outgoing flights. Gus Bane was burned. Peter’s two degrees of Kevin Bacon distance from Mozzie was the reason he was ditching the identity when he landed at his first destination, assuming another one and heading to another decoy location before repeating the process and heading to meet Gordon Taylor.

“Rest in peace, Gus,” Mozzie said to the passport picture before snapping it shut. “You had a good life.”

He really had. Neal grinned. Gus kept Feds off their trail in Istanbul and helped rip off a well-muscled billionaire in Hawaii. Now he would rest in peace with the rest of their burned identities.

Neal bumped into Mozzie as the airplane kid ran around them in a circle as they stood up, screeching that it was going to crash, and whooshing the toy at them before zooming after his mother as she hollered back for him.

Mozzie glowered. “Want to debate the unfortunate odds that I end up in the seat right next to him?”

“Oh, I’m hoping for it.”

Mozzie slapped his arm with his ticket and turned to follow the crowd. “See ya.”

Neal tucked his hands in his pockets and nodded. “See you.” He added, making Mozzie pause and look back, “My phone is on. If you get stuck in something. …Try not to get stuck. I don’t think Italian prisons have a wine menu.”

“Savages.”

Neal smiled at the floor.

With a wave, Mozzie walked away to board. The line ahead of him was gathering, but he stopped before reaching it. Neal’s brow furrowed as he turned back around slowly and after a moment of hesitation, walked back to Neal’s side.

He thought he might have forgotten something, but his lips were in a tight line and his eyes were clouded in thought. Neal waited patiently for what he wanted to say. He usually got that look when he was on the brink of a breakthrough, fixing to crack a code or reinterpret an ancient text in a way that turned it into a map with an X to try to reach. The way he was looking at Neal made him feel like he was the code.

“You know…” Mozzie started, getting a lifted brow and Neal’s full attention as he met his eyes and brought up with the kind of faux ultracasualness that spoke of deeper purpose, “the Windsor-Price exhibit is opening in Manhattan this weekend. You already bought those tickets… Any piece in the collection would easily go for 100K on the black market.”

That was the last thing Neal expected.

Mozzie’s nonchalance was more affected than Peter got around his in-laws. The warmth in his chest in response was harder to explain away with the sun. It made the sun feel small.

Uncertain of Mozzie’s intention or what he could promise within reason with his anklet, he asked, “What are you thinking?”

Mozzie’s answering shrug was tight as he ran through a quick list of their old cons and suggested, “A Rusted Tin Man?”

He was wary of working with oil so soon after the fire. A cousin con might get them past museum security, though.

“Between the Cowardly Lions might work better.” He paused. Even if it wasn’t just a fantasy because Mozzie needed the thrill and Neal missed the life, it was late on the clock to back out now. “But you can’t pull out on the Gordon Taylor job last minute.”

Mozzie wasn’t concerned.

He confessed, “I called him after our first session with Groves. Told him I might not be able to make it and to get a sub ready to take my place.”

That was news to Neal. He hadn’t realized he had taken his complaints to heart, especially since it hadn’t been fair to lay them on him in the first place.

He wanted to say no, because their partnership didn’t require exclusivity. The anklet wasn’t attached to both of them like a three-legged race. Mozzie wasn’t confined to New York. He should have said no, because risking another job with the FBI and Peter able to track his every move meant prison. He had to say no, because he knew Mozzie knew that too, and he’d end up passing up a lucrative job overseas for the fantasy of one in New York with him if it didn’t pan out.

What Neal actually said was, “A Windsor-Price would look great under my skylight.”

The smile that lit Mozzie’s face reflected back at him from Neal.

“Even better in one of my underground safe houses far from the prying eyes of the FBI. Lighting is nice. Avoiding arrest is somewhat nicer.”

“True.”

Mozzie pocketed his plane ticket and started back out for the street with Neal next to him, the heady rush of a new con shooting a spike of excitement through him as they walked side by side, a crazy idea and the skills to pull it off between them.

“I’ll case the place,” Mozzie said as they pushed outside and hailed a cab.

“I’ll restock my liquor cabinet.”

Time was relative but so was space. New York felt a lot bigger with Mozzie in it with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap. I really enjoyed revisiting these characters and spending some time in their heads. Getting something up for them was long overdue, so thank you for reading this!


End file.
